A while ago I wrote about Google Chrome on my Windows 7 on my work and home PCs. This week I installed Google Chrome 5 on all my PCs. What made me install Chrome? A full supported version for Linux. Just download and install the .deb file. The even have a x64 version too.
I decided to make Google Chrome my default browser on my Ubuntu 10.04 x64 notebook. I had to modify Thunderbird 3.04 to run Google Chrome. I will admit it’s fast. Faster than Firefox on my computer. Still there is the issue with unlimited cache files on my computer. I guess i can remember to clean it out once in a while. Maybe I can find a script to clean out the files every 30 days.
Last week I downloaded Linux Mint 9, both x32 and x64 bit platforms using Vuze. There were 2 different ISO formats to choose from: CDs and DVDs. The DVDs contain additional software and wallpaper. Kind of a waste of a DVD, but I said OK, I want all the goodies on one disc.
At work I have 2 Linux PCs, one has Ubuntu 10.04 x32 and another running Mint 8 x32. My Mint 8 PC hosts a Windows 7 VM using VirtualBoxOSE. I use this VM to connect to a Windows Domain to manage machine accounts. I also user Terminal Server Client to log onto another Microsoft server for running Symantec Ghost Solution Suite.
I closed my Windows 7 VM and other active connections and proceeded to backup my data and VM to my Ubuntu PC. The VM was about 13GB with other data files totaling about an additional 4GB. Installed the DVD, rebooted to install Linux Mint 9.
I admit I like the slideshow better in Ubuntu 10.04 than Mint 9, but it was still informative. Installation time was under 20 minutes on my PC. After a quick reboot I logged onto my new Mint 9 PC. What do I love about Mint?
Multimedia works right from the start. I was able to play YouTube and QuickTime videos.
Color scheme and Title bar Button Layout. I like the new color scheme Canonical went with on Ubuntu 10.04, but I like the color scheme with Mint too. Under Control Center – Look and Feel – Desktop Settings, I can change where the Title bar buttons go. I moved them to the left for something different.
I can configure the menu slab to always display my Favorites instead of what was shown last, rename the menu button to anything (I went with my PC name), show side pane or recent documents, change the column size for favorites, and install a scrollbar Places and System.
I enabled Desktop Effects and Compiz to get some of the eye candy running. Afterwards it was a quick data transfer of my personal data back into my home folder. I installed the following apps:
After getting my Windows 7 VM copied back to my PC, I configure the Startup Applications to launch my Windows 7 VM when I sign onto the system using the following command:
VBoxManage startvm PCVM01WIN7
. For some reason I cannot connect to the VM using the PC name but I can connect by IP address. I guess this give me something else to work on.
Bootchart records it take 14.91 seconds for the PC to boot. Nice!
I am contemplating if I should replace my Ubuntu 10.04 x64 on my Sager notebook with Mint 9 x64. I still have some issues with fast user switching on my Ubuntu 10.04 PCs (which I disabled using Ubuntu Tweaks), and the occasional lack of response from the OS when nothing works and I have to open Gnome-Terminal and reboot. I think this might be an issue with NVIDIA drivers. I’m not sure if I’ll have the same issues with Mint 9. And then there is the issue of creating a backup of the PC before I wipe off Ubuntu in favor of Mint 9. Should I use Symantec Ghost or create the PING CD and create a backup ISO file.
Either way you should give Linux Mint 9. Download the ISO and try the LiveCD or LiveDVD. Always be sure to backup and verify your data is safe BEFORE wiping the HDD.
Back on February 1st 2010, I said I was going to wait on installing Linux again on my new Sager NP8690. Well that didn’t last too long. Over the past weekend I ran Symantec Ghost to backup my hard drive, downloaded and installed openSuSE 11.2 64bit. Installation went well, I installed KDE and Gnome desktop environments. However openSuSE 11.2 ran a little sluggish. Although openSuSE was my first Linux distro, I can’t see myself running a distro that doesn’t thrill me. I have a lot of respect for the openSuSE developers and I think they have a fine product. I reinstalled the backup image and move to Linux Mint 8.
With Linux Mint 8 64bit, the installation was easy as always. What I really like the most was having everything work as soon as installation was complete. Of course I had to install the Nvidia drivers to enable Desktop Effects. After rebooting the PC, I was able to log onto Facebook and run Farmville, Fishville, and Happy Aquarium. I also watched the Avatar movie preview at Apple.com/trailers, and watch the Mac Ads. I also watched a few video clips on Youtube, clips from my Video folder, and listen to MP3s.
Although I can connect to my television set using HDMI, I am unable to get the resolution correct. Also I cannot play Blu-Ray movies (Star Trek) in Linux Mint. I did read there are some hack I can run, but to be honest I would rather have a player already installed or a codex available for VLC. I wouldn’t mind paying for a native application from Corel who sell WinDVD, an application that work well from my perspective.
I plan on running Windows 7 Ultimate and Linux Mint 8 in parallel for many of my applications. Although I use IMAP for my Google account, I’m not sure I want to check e-mail on both OSs. I still may set it up, but I need to decide which OS for my primary e-mail.
Well I finally received my new notebook on Tuesday January 26. I wanted to use my bootable BartPE USB jump drive to image the HDD before starting the first boot into Windows 7. Unfortunately I didn’t have the correct drivers in the BartPE image for the NIC or the AHCI controller. Even with this small issue, I enjoyed the nice color contrast on the 15.6″ widescreen at 1920×1080 with the glossy display. I’ve seen displays exactly like mine at retail stores. Usually the displays are all gunked up with fingerprints and grime from shoppers.
I like the simple look of the case – flat black all around except for the small silver Sager logo centered on the lid. There are only 2 stickers by the keyboard (HDMI and Intel Corei7) which does not give the computer a junked up look. The chiclet keyboard, which has a number pad on the right) took no time to get use to. Also there is little give in the center with normal pressure.
I booted into Windows 7 Ultimate and completed the mini setup wizard. I am happy to report no bloatware installed. Just the following applications:
Microsoft Office 2007 Standard 25 day trial (removed since I already own a copy of Office 2007 Professional)
Fingerprint reader
Blue-Ray player
Windows 7 recognized my wireless network and I installed the 64bit drivers for my HP 2605dn Color Laserjet network printer. Test pages printed without problems so now it was time to customize the screen by installing the Star Wars and Pittsburgh Steelers Desktop Themes I made awhile ago.
On Wednesday I installed Ubuntu 9.10 64bit – removing Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Ubuntu recognized everything except for the Nvidia card, but the Hardware Detection manager found the correct drivers for me and suggested which one to install. Desktop effects and Compiz were enabled and finally have the cool 3D spinning cube, wobble windows, and all the special effects I could want on my notebook. To finish up I installed the latest codecs for my multimedia files, Flash for Firefox and Virtualbox OSE. But soon I started to have some problems.
VirtualBox OSE installed correctly. I created a vm, installed Windows 7 and rebooted the vm as needed. The performance was extremely slow. WHAT?? This is a Core i7 with 6GB of 1333MHz RAM and a high-end Nvidia card with 1GB of dedicated RAM. After shutting down the vm I verified I had my settings correct and tried agin. Booting into the vm was extremely painful. I do not have this issue at work on my Intel P4 3.4GHz with 2GB of RAM. Since it was late I went to sleep to figure out what to do tomorrow. When I got home from work the next day I booted the system and logged into Facebook to catch up with some friends. While I was playing Farmville the session rebooted. That was strange. So I logged in again and went back to Facebook and the session rebooted again. After logging in a third time I googled for a reason Ubuntu 9.10 64bit would randomly reboot the session. Within three minutes it rebooted my session again.
Now I am extreamly upset with the system. I fired off an e-mail to a buddy of mine, reinstalled my Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit CD and rebooted. I spent the next several hours rebulding my PC. Windows 7 installed within 20 minutes, spent the next 30 minutes running the drivers CD (the user interface was awesome – good job to the folks who designed it), and the rest of the time spent installing Office 2007 Professional, Thunderbird 3 (with all the addons I like), Firefox 3.6, Filezilla 3.3.1, Quicktime, VLC, Google Earth, Picasa, Skype, Trillian 4.1, and a few other applications.
I really wanted to run Ubuntu on my new notebook, but the 64bit seems too unstable. Maybe I should have installed the 32bit version instead. Either way, I am happy now with Windows 7. I might at a later date install Ubuntu 10.04 or Linux Mint 9 on a second partition and have a dual-boot system.
I purchased Star Trek on Blu-Ray over the weekend and enjoyed watching the movie. The picture looked great but the sound from the computer speakers was difficult to hear with the fans running. I was able to connect the computer to my HDMI input for the TV, but the audio was not available. I might be missing a setting for HDMI.
I have two issues with this notebook – battery and bluetooth. For the battery you will get one hour out of it. You will not be playing games, watching a movie, or reading at the local coffee shop unless you have p power outlet near by. A two-hour battery should be the bare minimum for any notebook in my opinion. Everytime the computer sleeps or reboots the bluetooth is off. There is no option to leave it on in the Phoenix BIOS. I don’t think any notebook PC I’ve ever used from HP, IBM, or Dell had bluetooth off with each boot.
I also purchased a Swiss Gear IBEX backpack to carry the computer and other stuff. The bag is made of good materials and holds everything well. I did read about a few people having problems with the zippers. Out of the two bags at the store, only one had zippers that moved easily.
Besides these few issues with the hardware (battery life and bluetooth), I really like this computer. It is fast, Windows 7 works great, Ubuntu 9.10 64bit worked well the first day (maybe a different distro for me in the future), cool options available, and a sweet screen as well.
Sager NP8690Screen raisedChiclet keyboardDVI, e-sata, USB, audio input/output and express cardPower, HDMI, GB NIC, 2 USB, lockDVD / Blu-Ray, card reader, 1394 firewire, USB, and modemScreen closed with power supply
Today I created a new Desktop Theme with Star Wars pictures. The picture were not created by me and are in their original format. You can find the theme in my Box.net plugin on the sidebar of this blog. The file is called Star Wars.zip.
Yesterday I ordered my new notebook from Xoticpc.com. I was originally going to purchase the Serval Professional from Sysytem76.com, but I wanted to look to see if there was a better PC or if it was on sale. I soon learned Clevo manufactures the notebook I wanted and provides this notebook to retailers who re-brand the units as their own. So I searched the Internet for W860CU (one of the models Clevo builds) and started reading posts about their products and posts about different resellers who deal with them.
So I checked out several on-line retailers and discovered that I can get the same notebook PC (from what I can tell by looking at pictures) with more options than what System76 offered. So I customized the PC (see below) and compared to what I was going to order from System76. The price difference, $1.00 US. Like most of us, I want the best value I can get for my money. System76 just didn’t offer me everything I wanted: Blue-ray player, 3 year labor warranty, and upgraded thermal compound.
There was an option to purchase the PC with no OS, but I wanted to purchase Windows 7 from Newegg at a later date. Now I can have either a dual boot system or create a VM from within Ubuntu.
When the PC arrives, I plan on backing up the HDD first then wiping it our for Ubutnu 9.10. I will install Windows 7 Ultimate as a VM. As I stated before I am really starting to like Windows 7 at work. I have the Enterprise version installed on three PC and found it to be reliable.
15.6” FHD 16:9 LED Backlit Wide screen (1920×1080) Super Clear Glare Type Screen
Last night I was playing around with Windows 7 and decided to make a Desktop Theme dedicated to the Pittsburgh Steelers. You can find the theme in my Box.net plugin on the sidebar of this blog. Download Pittsburgh Steelers Win7 Theme.zip to your Windows 7 PC.
Please note the theme was made on Windows 7 Enterprise. I’m not 100% sure if it works on other versions of Windows 7. I might try it on my Windows Vista PC at work.
I’m really staring to like Windows 7. I think there is some real good quality in this product. I still prefer Ubuntu Linux as my OS of choice, but I think I will install a VM on my new PC and run both.
Drahusz 