Category: Linux Stuff

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.04 RC Upgrade Complete

Post author By George
Post date April 18, 2009
No Comments on Ubuntu 9.04 RC Upgrade Complete

The upgrade went well for the most part. After the packages were downloaded, the system was suppose to install the upgrades. I waited for an hour, but nothing happened. Time to reboot and try again. This time the upgrade worked correctly. The total time to upgrade my PC was 2 hours 10 minutes. My PC is over 7 years old; it is a Dell Dimension 8200 P4 1.8 GHz with 768 MB RAM, NVIDIA GForce 2 MX 400 64MB video card, and 80 GB ATA 7200 RPM HDD.

According to bootchart, my system boots within 33 seconds. However, conky has me up and running in exactly 1 minute ready at my Desktop. The upgrade also resolved a video driver issue I had playing movies and seeing the menu bar in OpenOffice. I still cannot enable the cool 3-D effects, but I guess you can’t have everything.

The system is still running ext3. I’m not sure how to move to ext4 without rebuilding, but I have some time to research it. I started Firefox and logged into Youtube to see if I still can play and watch movie there. Nope. Flash player was detected as being an old version or my javascript was not enabled. Well, I knew javascript was running, so closed Firefox and removed and reinstalled flash with the following commands: sudo aptitude purge flashplugin-nonfree andsudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree.Now I can watch Jeff Dunham anytime I want!

I will order the Ubuntu 9.04 CD as soon as I can and then most likely do a complete reinstall. After all, this system started as Ubuntu 8.04, ugraded to 8.10, and now is 9.04 RC.

My PC from bootchart

Tags Ubuntu, Upgrades

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.04 RC

Well, I’ve deceided to update my version of Ubuntu 8.10 to Ubuntu 9.04 RC. I updated my backup for Linux, and I will run the update with the command update-manager -d -c. Good luck to me!

Tags Ubuntu

Ubuntu

10 Expert Ubuntu Tricks by: Keir Thomas

Post author By George
Post date April 16, 2009
No Comments on 10 Expert Ubuntu Tricks by: Keir Thomas

I read Keir’s book, Ubuntu Kung Fu and use it as a reference. I thought it was well written. Plus, it has a kitten on it doing some kitten kung fu. It reminded me of my old cat from a few years ago… except he was a different breed, color, and somewhat evil.

Keir posted the following link which is also good to read, maybe more for a reminder for some.

Tags Ubuntu

Ubuntu

2 Weeks and Counting

Just two weeks remaining until Ubuntu 9.04 is released. I was talking with a colleague of mine yesterday about Vista, and how much we don’t like it. I found out he like to use Linux, openSUSE to be exact. However, he hasn’t used it in a few years. Work is taking up a lot of his time right now.

I told him About Ubuntu 8.10, the distro I’m using now and to expect Ubuntu 9.04 in 15 days. He is going to check it out and see how well it runs on his old PC. My guess, it will run pretty well if he was running openSUSE on it.

Tags Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Backup Complete

I was able to complete the backup of my XP and Linux partitions. I also resolved a video issue when trying to play videos in Ubuntu. I had to run the NVIDIA setting manager as root (sudo nvidia-settings) and save the setting in the xorg.config file. I still can’t enable the cool 3-D effects, but atleast I can watch all the video I have.

Tags Home_PC, Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.04 Live-CD

Over the weekend I tried Ubuntu 9.04 beta using the Live-CD. Since I was using the Live-CD mode, I did not see any increase in performance with the file system, nor did I expect to. However, I was disappointed with the fact Evolution 2.26 was not able to import PST files. A friend of mine sent me a link from bugs.launchpad.net. From what it looks like to us, they are working on the issue.

I also talked about using the Live-CD to a colleague at work. I explained how I was going to update Ubuntu from 8.10 to 9.04. He asked about my home profile and if I was going to back it up. I said I was planning on backing it up, but I also explained that my home folder is on a separate partition. So replacing one Linux distro with another is no big deal. Just have to remember not to wipe out that partition, and instruct Linux that is where /home resides.

Tags Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Looking Forward to Ubuntu 9.04

Post author By George
Post date March 28, 2009
No Comments on Looking Forward to Ubuntu 9.04

I’ve been using different Linux distros over the past nine years. I come to like several of them. My top two are Ubuntu 8.10 and openSUSE 11.1. And I am looking forward to upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 in April. A good friend of mine installed the beta this weekend, and he noticed a big difference with the entire process. In under one minute he can boot the PC, enter in his user name and password, connect to his home wireless, and be ready for any PC related task. Nice…any chance to reduce the boot time is always a bonus.

I am looking forward to Evolution being able to import PST files without going through third party software. I want to migrate my away from Windows XP and become 95% Linux. The other 5% of the time is for work related stuff, and for providing IT Support on the side.

There are other features coming Ubuntu 9.04, and you can read about them by clicking on the Ubuntu Countdown picture.

Tags Ubuntu