I’ve had something of an emergency situation the past couple days. While looking for solutions to my sound problem, I stumbled upon an thread about what seemed to be a rather serious bug that cause Ubuntu to eat the hard drive, causing it to park and at a far greater rate than usual, burning it out within a years time.

This first emerged a couple years ago, but there still seems to be some concern as to whether or not it can cause trouble. The culprit seemed the the power management settings in laptop mode, whether it’s Ubuntu’s fault, the computer manufacturer to or the third party manufacturer is up for debate, but it worried me nonetheless.

It seems to have been fixed and laptop mode is shut off by default in Interpid Ibex amongst others, still it was hard to find a real consensus and whether I should check modify BIOS, apply a fix suggested in many Ubuntu threads, etc. I had the same problem as I do in any other problem with Ubuntu-there seems to be a hundred different methods of fixing something, and it’s difficult to tell which will really do the trick.

I feel like everything should be fine. I haven’t enabled any laptop mode to my knowledge and have no need to, since I only use my comp at home, but I’ll keep it plugged in while in Ubuntu just to be safe.

I must admit, I was impressed with the installation process. Much in the same way I’ve seen other distributions launch a Live CD prior to an actual installation, I had the same option here. I simple selected “Install to Hard Drive” right away, without checking anything.

I found the file transfer and formating a bit slower than I expected, but in retrospect, that’s probably because I only allocated 512MB of RAM to this system. Prior to the next reboot (further down in this post), I’ll change that to 1GB - That should speed things up a bit.

The LiveCD boot and Install Screen

One thing I noticed when I selected the name of the computer, it provided me the suggestion of xxxxx.xxxxxx - In my opinion, this might confuse new or inexperienced users. Most of us (I think) are familiar with entering a single name. While that in itself is not an issue, it could be in some networking environments. In my case I selected to enter ferdora.localdomain. This means that my computer is part of the networked computers under the “family” (network) named “localdomain” and it’s unique name is “fedora”. As such “fedora” can easily communicate and network with all computers managed under the “localdomain” network - which is separate of other networks. I hope I’ve not confused too many people here.

The remainder of the installation was very smooth, no bumps or questions, again that impressed me.

Upon rebooting (I’ve upgraded the memory to 1GB and rebooted about 5 times), I still find the boot up slow. Compared to Windows XP in the same environment and to Ubuntu 8.04, it seems very slow (the boot process that is). While I have written posts in my other blog (Ubuntu Linux Help), I’m not yet sure how to approach tweaking on a Red Hat based distribution.

So here I have a shiny new desktop. Clicking around I find there’s a Floppy drive available, which is funny since there is none installed. Other OS’s I use don’t display hardware that is not available. One thing interesting (to me at least) is that the menu system looks almost the same as other Linux distributions, I suppose much in the same way that Windows distributions all look similar.

Cannot Play Streamed MP3's Warning

…eek! Where are all the applications? There’s hardly anything there. I know it’s a simple matter to add more and I remember that the installation command had the word “yum” in it. I guess I have a bit of Google searching to do. No problem, I am looking forward to learning (that’s why I took this challenge in the first place). There is a positive side to this… Instead of haveing an excessive number of applications pre-installed, I only have to add what I do want, with a minimal of uninstalling. For example I don’t need AbiWord, but I do want OpenOffice (I was a bit surprised that OpenOffice was not included - especially when the new version of Gimp was installed).

Looks like I'll have to manually install something?

RhythmBox is also installed, great! That means I can connect to my local iTunes server via DAAP share. Aww nuts! I can’t play any music because of a codec issue. I’ll leave this for another post then - How to fix music so I can play. (I remember there were a few things I had to install in Ubuntu Linux, so perhaps this is a similar issue here? I’m sure it’s something to do with the restricted media formats or something like that.

In any event, as I mentioned, I did have to install media related codecs, etc in other Linux based distributions. It’s only a matter (I think) of finding where or how to do this. One resource I’ll check before my next post is Fedora Multimedia/Codeina. Hopefully that will provide the answers and the codecs, etc. that are needed to play common multimedia.

About a year ago, I wrote a post on Ubuntu Linux Help where I discussed some of my experiences and opinions, in general I described some of the motivating factors and opportunities as to why I quit Windows and switched to Linux. If you have the opportunity, do read that post as it will give you a bit more insight into my personal 30 day challenge using Fedora 10.

It’s been some time since I used Fedora. I left Fedora and migrated to Ubuntu when Fedora 2 was popular and (if I remember) Fedora 3 was to be shortly released. Since it has been so long (I was surprised to see that Fedora was at version 10!), I thought it would be great to use it for my 30 day challenge. I’m excited and really looking forward to this.

If I remember correctly, Fedora is Red Hat based so I’ll not have access to Debian repositories via “sudo aptitude install xxx” and the like, however I think “yum” was used (I’m sure I’ll find out!)

Courtesy of the Fedora Project

To be fair I should point out that I’ll be running this OS under VirtualBox, using Ubuntu Linux 8.04 as the host. As such, if there are any fixes or tweaks I need to make, I’ll have to take this into consideration? (I’m not a virtualization guru).  For now however, I’ve headed on over to the Fedora  Project site to do a bit of reading first. A couple things I immediately like about the site:

They have a “planet” available to the community. That way I can see what’s going on and find valuable links to resources.
There’s a wiki available, which is great as I’m sure I’ll be needing some support information, and again links to helpful  resources

Of course, my first stop will be the download section, so I can grab the ISO and maybe the installation documentation.

There are three primary issues I’m looking for: OS stability, multimedia capability and a wide availability of applications (preferably cross-platform friendly).

So… without further delay, I’m off to download and install Fedora 10.

So I’m done playing around with the superficial stuff and have finally settled down to fixing some of the real challenges of getting Ubuntu up and running, stuff that got me frustrated enough to abandon ship after my first cruise on the HMS Ubuntu.

I attempted to download flash 10 straight from adobe only to get a “i386 wrong architecture” warning. Not at all surprising, I know from experience in Windows that having a 64 machine poses an added layer of challenges. Why that is, I’m not sure. While, It’s still something of a new-ish development for home users, it’s not exactly what you’d call cutting edge anymore, either. 64 bit processing is popular enough to become standard issue on many computers; still, I can’t begin to recite the number of programs that are still incompatible with it.

So I set about consulting at least three different tutorials trying to download the latest version for Linux. I’ll spare you the details. other than they ranged from the simple to the complex, all involving punching commands into the terminal, and none of them worked. In between attempts, I read that I should have previous versions uninstalled first. I couldn’t even tell if I had them in the first place. All I had to show for my effort was a lot of unintelligible code from failed installations. I was totally unsure what any of those attempts has done to my OS, if anything. I tried a secunia scan to search for multiple programs, only to find out that while Ubuntu has some sort of default applet installed, the java applet necessary to scan. Ugh, one plugin at a time, thank you, I’ll get back to that later.

At this point, it dawned on me to try www.UbuntuLinuxhelp.com. Now the terms of this blog exercise are that I can’t solicit help from the site to avoid giving the impression of preferential treatment - I’m supposed to scour the internet attempting to figure this out just like any lone newb would. I can, however delve into material they had already posted to look for solutions. The results?

BINGO!

Image courtesy of t9t

They have an article with some instructions to more seasoned users and a link to a step by step tutorial on softpedia. The softpedia tutorial was seemingly easy enough to follow, I didn’t have to open up the terminal once, and after the first few steps I found out I didn’t have any older versions of flash installed-all those other attempts failed.

I had to turn off Firefox Browser to install it, which meant I needed to use a different browser to follow the tutorial. I figured this would be a good opportunity to try a more linux-centric browser, and chose epiphany. It’s nothing special at first glance-no bells or whistles to speak of. Who knows, it might have all sorts of applications for developers, but I can’t tell by looking at it - it seems purely functional. It was easy enough to download, but no desktop icon!? I had to dig around the menus before I found it.

The softpedia tutorial seemed simple enough and didn’t require me to go into the terminal at all, which was a relief, but one step seemed to be left out: after nsplugin has to be marked for installation after it’s been summoned through the search window. No mention was made of this, and I was so intent on looking for older versions of flash that it didn’t dawn on me until I had finished with the entire tutorial. Luckily I was able to backtrack and figure it out, because it had me wondering whether I should try yet another reinstall of Ubuntu.

I don’t know how long I’ll be content with this version of Flash-It’s the alpha version, and www.UbuntuLinuxhelp.com mentions that it doesn’t work on some sites, but I’m happy just to be able to watch youtube with it right now.

The keyword here is “watch”….

One big reason for switching to Linux is it’s increased security, which a friend of mine described “bomb-proof”. Viruses and spyware don’t attack operating systems arbitrarily, they’re programmed for specific ones, not to mention specific browsers, and the risk to an OS is in direct proportion to it’s popularity, which is why Windows and Internet Explorer are far more prone than Linux or Firefox. According to this BBC article, the number of active viruses will top one million this year, with the majority of them targeting Windows. Compare that with the mere 500 or so that have been designed for Linux, which are mostly theoretical, having been designed in university computer science labs for research purposes with patches already developed.

This may all change should Linux become as popular as it’s supporters hope it will, but since that won’t happen any time soon, I won’t be using any anti-malware in my Ubuntu, (Read this essay from psychocats for a more detailed explanation as to why anti-malware isn’t needed in Linux) even though I have a sneaking suspicion that even as I type this, some fourteen year old malcontent is designing a thoroughly lethal, Linux compatible virus that will make my computer look like it forgot to close it’s eyes when The Arc of The Covenant was opened.

But I was curious to see if Vista was susceptible from viruses via Wubi. After all, Wubi is installed, downloaded directly onto windows, and I wondered if that somehow made it more susceptible than a partition install or a live CD. I’ve read conflicting descriptions as to whether or not Wubi is indeed a virtual partition in traditional sense of the term, so I conducted a little experiment just to see how distinct it really is from Vista.

I went to the eicar anti-malware test site. For the uninitiated, eicar offers a reputable test which “infects” your computer with a fake virus & spyware, that aren’t capable of doing any harm to your computer, but contain enough characteristics of the real thing that your anti-malware programs should perceive them as a threat if they’re up to the task.

So I downloaded and saved all the fake threats into Ubuntu just to see if there would be a warning in Windows. There wasn’t, so I’m satisfied that as far as malware goes, Ubuntu is as safe and separate an entity from Vista as live CD or partitioned install.

On a related note, I can’t help but wonder how reliable the eicar test really is. I’m no expert on virus detection-or anything computer related for that matter, but wouldn’t any halfway reputable company make sure their product could pass it? I think it’s true purpose isn’t really to test your anti-malware’s effectiveness, so much as it is to see if you’ve got it turned on and in working order.

Ubuntu does not come ready with sound.

S-O-U-N-D

Computers are a bi-sensuous medium of sight and sound. They don’t have smell like different scented candles with every program they run, it doesn’t have feel smooth and silky to the touch, or taste like lobster bisque when you lick the screen (You lick the screen, too, right? I can’t be the only one). You have to see it and hear it, and yet Ubuntu has actually released an OS that does not readily deliver the other 50% of the experience.

Image courtesy of greyman

Forget the obvious drawbacks of not being able to play DVDs, radio, music - it’s the little things I notice the most; I’ve got a whole new appreciation for the constant feedback that those seemingly unremarkable little clicks, beeps and chimes actually contribute to my overall computing experience. Remove them and you get deafening silence. It feels too unnerving after a while.

Somehow the log on window has tribal drumming sounds, though. Don’t ask me how that they managed that.

So off I went to figure out how to get sound up in working order I knew this would be a daunting task because I already tried it once, and I’m not the only one who’s having trouble-this is a system wide problem, at least for 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. The Ubuntu forums are fraught with threads about sound issues.

So I googled “No sound in Ubuntu 8.10 64 bit”. The first site that seemed promising was the this thread: Comprehensive Sound Problem Solutions Guide from the Ubuntuforums.org by LordRaiden, who obviously put a lot of time & effort into it.

The first thing it tells me to do is punch code into the shell. It’s already thrown me. I didn’t know that “shell” and “terminal” are the same thing, but could deduce as much by the code it instructed me to punch in

I find out I have STAC92xx Digital sound cards installed on my system. It directs me to the alsamixer section of the tutorial, so far so good.

I enter “alsamixer”. The guide tells me that ” You will now see what appears to be a graphical equalizer. It is more like ten different volume controls in the sample place.”

It appears to be anything but. It says “[AlsaMixer v1.0.17]” at the top of the terminal window. It does not look like a graphics equalizer. It lists chip and card, both pulseaudio, and view {playback} Capture All.

I did manage to find ‘GNOME ALSA mixer completely by accident in the under “applications>sound &video”. Now this looks like a graphics equalizer. Maybe this magically appeared in previous versions of Ubuntu, but if not, why would he ever assume I’d know where to find it?

So I set all the vertical and horizontal sliders somewhere in the middle. Then I turn up the volume and that’s when I hear it-an incessant pinging,the last notes of the tribal drums from the log in window hanging indefinitely. I think I remember hearing this briefly during my last tango with Ubuntu, so I don’t think it’s a result of anything I performed in this particular tutorial.

So I’m wrong all about Ubuntu, it does includes sound-one single, solitary, grating sound that has a maddeningly irritating effect that few sounds, like a dripping faucet, or someone tapping their pencil on a desk, have. Luckily it’s faint enough that I can turn the volume down and make it go away. There’s one thing I know:  if this sound hasn’t disappeared if and when and when I get sound, Ubuntu could have Dolby Surround Sound pumping from my PC, and it won’t be enough to get me to ignore that goddamn pinging. And that alone will be more than enough for me to say goodbye to Ubuntu.

I do an image search of alsamixer, and there seems to be a wide variety of them. Mine bares a close enough resemblance to convince me this is what I’m supposed to have..It gives me no suggestions on configuring sound options, advice on testing it to see if they work. Enter more; More code is suggested to save my settings, but I’m not sure if I want to save them, seeing as they don’t appear to work

Not that it matters, the settings are right where I left them after I restarted. And the silence hasn’t gone anywhere either.

To be continued…

…unfortunately.

Yesterday I began playing around with desktop effects. Linux has a pretty good reputation for effects - the shear number of cool screen savers alone is pretty impressive, so I was looking forward to playing with them, particularly the cube, a four dimensional rotating desktop that I hoped to enable using this tutorial.

I had already set up the compiz config before, and just as I was  completing the final steps to cube-dom, I got this this warning:

The new value for the key binding for the action Next top image in plugin Cube Reflection and Deformation conflicts with the action Next Slide of the Desktop Cube plugin.
Do you wish to disable Next Slide in the Desktop Cube plugin?

Yes, it really said that.

I cut and pasted the warning into Google, and couldn’t find any matches.

So I opted to disable Next Slide in the desktop plug in, having no idea what it was.

It didn’t work. Apparently it didn’t occur to the good people at Ubuntu to create a feature that allowed to you to click on “cube” and then… get a cube.

I found a related tutorial in the Ubuntu forums help any, either, but it did have a link to download The Emerald Theme Manager, which I understand can give Ubuntu the same sort of slick, translucent look that I like about Vista. Clicking on Emerald produces a menu with all sorts of options, none of them readily understandable.

At this point the novelty had worn off. I played with this stuff because it’s irresistible, seems fun and could be a strong selling point for Ubuntu, especially for younger users - I know the wobbly windows alone would be enough to make my ten year old nephew drool and demand Ubuntu be installed on his laptop, but it’s not necessary to my everyday computing needs and seems like more trouble than it’s worth right now. I’ll get back to it another time, but here’s great example of what Compiz-Fusion is capable of:

The first thing after hearing tribal drums of the log in page, I’m greeted by Ubuntu’s desktop:

Ubuntu Intrepid desktop

I like the wallpaper-abstract, yet earthy, textured-no slick, sterile, monochromatic wallpaper for Ubuntu. I can’t help but wonder who had the final say in choosing it. Did Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth himself stroll through a gallery of potential wallpapers, then suddenly stop and exclaim “That’s IT! The brown one. No, the other brown one, the one that looks like the dog just dragged his behind in a circle on the carpet. That’s the one.”?

And Ubuntu comes with the Firefox browser installed. I love FF and use it on windows, but I might try a more Linux-centric browser when I get a chance.

And It seems fast. Granted it should, it’s not bogged down by any of the software I’ve installed in Vista. But it seems to be the case with Linux in general-and this might be my imagination, but I’d swear even Windows works a little quicker, a little snappier since I installed it. I’m starting to wonder if Ubuntu might whiten my teeth and make my skin glow with continued use.

And multiple desktops-cool! Two little squares in the lower right hand corner bottom, you click on one, a whole new desktop appears, click the other square, you get the old one. This ideal for multi-taskers who don’t want to wade through a glut of window, or employees who want to give the boss the illusion of working while secretly slipping back and forth between the work desktop their pretending to be busy with, and the russiangamblingporntorrentsite.com they’re really on. If Windows has a feature like this, I haven’t heard of it.

And no desktop icons, either. Everything is in the upper system tray, which is fine by me - icons just look goofy. My wireless is up and running easily, what’s surprising is that my Hawkings dish seems to work in it, too. The wireless menu shows both the PC’s wireless and the dishes’ connection in a menu of available signals, and the quickplay wifi light flickers depending on the strength of the connection, And not only does it tell me how much battery life I have, but estimates how long it will be before I run out.Windows does none of this.

I’ve heard much about Linux’s visual effects, so I decide to take them for a spin; they’re the second item listed on the help window, so the good people at Ubuntu obviously understand the value of eye candy. My PC is an entertainment system with plenty of resources to spare, so I enable the advanced settings.

I get rubbery windows that wobble when moved, heh.

More on visual effects tomorrow;)

The Wubi install went really well, but took longer than expected. Although the Wubi page promises “Just run the installer, enter a password for the new account, and click “Install”, go grab a coffee, and when you are back, Ubuntu will be ready for you.” Maybe that actual installation might take that long, but the entire process of downloading it takes significantly longer, about an hour and a half for me-your mileage may vary. Still, it’s pretty impressive how painless it is: just download and perform the typical install wizard stuff, choose a log in name and password, let it reboot a couple times and poof! You’ve got a another operating system installed.

As I’ve said before, I quickly grew frustrated with Ubuntu and deleted, it and while the initial install went great, reinstalling was as different matter, because like a drunken frat boy or O.J. Simpson, Wubi doesn’t clean up after itself very well.

After deleting Ubuntu through the typical control panel uninstall, it still remained an option on the start up menu. Not only that, but i couldn’t get get it to reinstall. It was fairly obvious something wasn’t being removed, and whatever it was prevented me from reinstalling Ubuntu. One help site suggested things that I go to:

“control panel -> system -> advanced -> startup_and_recovery and pressing “Edit”

Image courtesy of Rudepea

This wasn’t entirely accurate, I suspect it might be the correct path for XP, but not Vista. Even then, if you take a look at the advanced settings, there’s quite a few options. Edit? Edit what? Other threads mentioned the ISO image. All I could find on the ISO is that its stands for International Organization for Standardization, that I assume unifies standards of, well… everything, far as I can tell. I have no idea how that relates to computers or this problem in particular.This seems like a case of an expert taking it for granted that whomever they’re helping knows what they’re talking about.

Since I couldn’t figure out how to delete the Ubuntu option on the boot up menu, I then had to download a program that was suggested, EasyBCD, which indeed worked pretty easily. However, I still couldn’t reinstall properly. Some obtrusive element of Ubuntu still remained. So not only does it not completely remove itself, but it required me to download another program to try to get rid of it, which still didn’t work - not exactly a good way to ingratiate yourself to new customers.

So I went straight to the horse’s mouth to the Ubuntu forums looking for help. This was the first sign that not all is well in Ubuntu land. There’s a frightening amount of activity on that site, I’ve never seen forums with that many members logged on; they seem swamped over there (this is what lead me to UbunuLinuxHelp.com in the first place)

It took a good six days or so before I got a solution, and while their first response was fairly timely, the second took almost 48 hours. I don’t want to appear unappreciative for their help, I understand they’re busy and have members with problems far more demanding than mine, but really, would it have killed them to send a pm saying, “Sorry, it’s gonna take a while to get to that. We appreciate your patience”?

The most feedback I got was from a fellow member who had posted a similar problem and get any help either. Finally on the sixth day, one of the members suggested I delete the C:\ubuntu and C:\wubildr files. How do I find these folders? I know there’s more than one way to find access a program, but which one would have worked best? There were other seemingly related Ubuntu threads that mentioned deleting via the registry editor, the real meat and potatoes of an OS, that were accompanied by dire warnings to be careful, and not bother if you don’t know what you’re doing. You can see how all of this could be a nightmare for an newb.

Once I managed to locate the aforementioned files, deleting them didn’t help. I used Wubi’s own delete feature, yet all the folders remained, even after restarting-the actual OS might have been deleted, but the tools to set it up in the first place weren’t. Even though manually Deleting those particular folders wasn’t the answer, but it did cause me me scout my entire C drive until I finally found the culprit, the wubi.exe file. It’s distinct from the Ubuntu folder and was in the folder I had downloaded Ubuntu into. This is the ISO, I assume, the seed from which the entire OS is created. It’s tiny, seemingly insignificant looking, and less than 1kb. You’d think it was desktop icon or something.

Needles to say, I resent the idea that it was leftover, even though I’m sure it wouldn’t have done any harm. It seems like common courtesy and good business to have your software clean up after itself, and it certainly shouldn’t make it difficult fro someone to reinstall, especially since it seems to pretty common for people to takes several tries at Linux before finally getting the hang of it. Why Wubi-Ubuntu has been allowed to be The Weather Channel toolbar of Operating systems is beyond me.

Everybody hates Windows, right? And most of us can’t afford a Mac, but consider the following scenario: what if there was a free operating system that was hailed as being far superior to Windows in every way? One that was more stable, far more secure (virtually virus and spy-ware proof) and can do everything Windows can do and more. And to top it all off, what if it was free. That’s right, free, as so is all the software that comes with it.

It exists, and Linux be thy name.

Linux is a free operating system created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, and based it upon Bell Labs’ venerable Unix system and it’s been the chosen OS of serious computer geeks ever since. This is due in larger part to Linux’s open source capability, meaning that unlike Windows, which has closed source code that only Microsoft can access, anyone with the will and the know-how can modify a Linux operating system and it’s software to their hearts desire, all in keeping with the Gnu-Linux philosophy.

Image courtesy of Barunpatro

As a result, there are over 300 variations of Linux available called distributions, or distros for short. In the past few years, Linux has been attempting to make inroads into the mainstream with Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distro to date.

One of Ubuntu’s most attractive features is the innovative way it allows beginners to give it a spin. Typically in order to try Linux distro , you’d have to either order a live cd (or burn one of of your own) or partition your hard drive for a permanent install-a tricky, intrusive process that can truly eff up your computer if done improperly.

Now there’s a third method-the Wubi installer. Wubi allows users to download Ubuntu right onto Windows into a single folder. When you boot up, the start up screen will give you the option of either using Windows or Ubuntu. Don’t like it? Delete it from Windows same as you would any other application. No harm, no foul.

In the next thirty days, yours truly, a newbie who’s only owned computer for a couple months, will attempt to become proficient in Ubuntu in 30 days. I’ll be chronicling my successes and failures, perhaps illustrating Linux’s strengths and weaknesses, and my own as well. Hopefully this will help curious newbs avoid some of the mistakes I’ll inevitably make while allowing experienced Linux gurus to gain insight as to where beginners like myself are coming from, and be better able to help us.