Tag Archives: ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.04

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…Is called Jaunty Jackelope by the Ubuntu people. I think what they really meant to call it was Jenky Jenkalope because it’s a pile.

I thought Ubuntu 8.04 was slow, but 9.04 so far as actually made my laptop even slower. Opening firefox is still slow but now openOffice 3.0 works in crawl mode even when all I want to do is scroll down using the scrollbar. Is that too much to ask for? Plus Jenky Jenkalope has already crashes twice in the past 30 minutes. Apparently trying to change folders will do that trick. Trying to do anything basic causes massive CPU usage.

Now, I’m not entirely sure if this is Jenkelope’s fault. I am running Ubuntu on a laptop that was originally running a Sony butchered version of Windows XP Home, and I know that this laptop doesn’t like to run much else. I was initially surprised with Ubuntu because without much hassle, muss or fuss I was able to just install it and it ran and detected everything on this machine. Well, everything except the ATI card, because Linux as shit for ATI support. I saw the new ATI drivers. I wasted a day trying to install it only to end up with Ubuntu greeting me with its safe mode, graphics-failed-to-initialize mode. It’s a total bitch to try and fix the graphics it it goes belly-up too.

I really wanted to love Ubuntu because it claimed to usher in some new age of computing that would free me from the Microsoft ball and chain, but so far I’m not impressed. Linux is the kind of computing platform that’s supported by good intentions and alturism. It makes people feel good because its the people’s OS. Made by people, for people, which is where the African word Ubuntu comes from. A million code monkeys sitting at a million computers tapping out and compiling the greatest set of computing tools that you could ask for, but I feel that none of the software is up to snuff. Why does openOffice Writer feel so slow when I go to move the scrollbar? Does my 1.7 Ghz laptop computer, which in its heyday was a grand machine capable of running HL2 without a hitch, not have the processing power to handle a scrollbar? I want to believe that GIMP and Inkscape might oneday replace Photoshop and Illustrator/Flash, but I doubt it. The verb “Photoshop(ped)” has now entered mainstream venacular; I don’t think you’ll hear someone saying that an image got “GIMPped” any time soon. This isn’t to say that I don’t believe in open source software. openOffice on Windows is very good. Blender is an excellent 3D modeling and otherwise complete Maya replacement solution.

As for me, I think I’m going to switch back to using Windows on this laptop. My experiment into using Ubuntu didn’t totally fail; it’s just not a good experience for me. I want to use my OS and not tinker with every little thing under the hood to make it run like a normal windows machine might. I do also have a new experiment which I hope to be trying soon: a Macintosh. I’ve decided to make the plunge into the world of OS X. I’m hoping that a company that custom builds their machines to work with their OS and software will transcend simple good intentions and give me a good user experience.

Ubuntu

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I must be cursed with technology. For the last three or four years my computers all seem to die an untimely death. It all began with my PC after installing Doom 3. It roasted my power supply which in turn roasted everything attached to it. I tried to replace the parts, but there were bits that just maintained the curse of doom making it impossible for me to ever trust that machine as a fully functional computer ever again. It died a terrible death one final time after I moved to my current apartment back in 2006 and I was pretty much forced to build a new PC from scratch. That PC nearly suffered a stroke sometime in 2008 when one of the motherboard fans went wonky and I had to do a bit of open case surgery. My computers at work have suffered various aliments too from bad graphics cards to well…all kinds of harddrive problems. I now have a graveyard of harddrives in my cube from failed attempts to get me working again — my current computer is in good health.

So yesterday my laptop crashed. Windows XP Home suffered from some kind of IRQL_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL error that it could not recover from. I didn’t have my recovery discs with me. So game over man, end of story. I now have an 8.5 lb doorstop with me on my Christmas break.

Until I decided, “What the hell. I’ll install Ubuntu Linux.”

I haven’t used a Unix system since college. How hard was it?

Step 1. Download the ISO and burn it.
Step 2. Backup all my crap on the computer and pop the disc in the CD tray
Step 3. I pick install from the Ubuntu menu and answer some questions and BAM
Step 4. Done.

So far nothing seems to terrible. There are things I don’t understand about Linux yet, but what the hell, I’ll go with the flow and deal with the challenges as the arise. The most important things I got out of the way. Web browsing is built in with firefox. I got VLC to play DVDs and videos. MP3s can be played by some software already preloaded on the OS. It connects to USB devices without a hitch.

I know there are things I can’t do. I suspect I can’t play Netflix online movie player on Ubuntu since Firefox doesn’t support it. I probably won’t be able to play my iTunes m4ps but there’s a simple way around that.

Regardless, so far playing with Ubuntu is going fairly smoothly, and I’ll keep you updated as I discover the limitations of this new OS.