Posts tagged Ubuntu
Wacom Bamboo in Ubuntu 9.04
May 13th
Today I got my Wacom Bamboo USB Tablet in from Newegg. Installation in Jaunty was incredibly easy, I just plugged it in and the Wacom drivers were already installed and ready to go. The corners of the tablet automatically mapped to the corners of the screen, which in some previous Ubuntu releases required a bit of editing to Xorg.conf.
I’ve really only messed with two apps so far, Gimp and Evernote. Gimp is, of course, preinstalled in Ubuntu and allows pen input just fine, although it doesn’t automatically map the eraser to the Erase tool.
Evernote doesn’t have a native Linux version, but it runs quite well in Wine. The only issue I’ve come across so far is that I cannot drag and drop files from Nautilus into a notebook. My plan is to use this to handwrite notes for school, and I’ve already been typing my notes into Evernote for the last few days. Evernote is nice because it automatically keeps your notes synced between multiple installations (for me, that’s Evernote/Wine Evernote/VistaVM and Evernote/W7) and also has a web interface for when I’m not at one of my computers. This syncing allows me to drag files to Evernote either by opening a VM or remoting to my desktop and then they will automatically be synced back to the copy of Evernote I’m running in Wine.
Small, personal web servers
Sep 27th
Tiny Mini-ITX web server
I recently helped my roommate shop for a small, personal web server. We wound up basing it on Intel’s Atom platform, and I was amazed at how cheap it was. The server (pictured above) came up to almost exactly $200, including shipping, and has a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 512MB of Memory, and an 80GB hard drive. It runs Ubuntu 8.04 Server Edition.
The motherboard is a Mini-ITX form factor board, so the whole server is pretty small. It has a low power consumption, with the Atom CPU using only 4W of electricity. For anyone looking to host their own web page, the Atom is a great way to do it. So far, the box has handled everything we’ve thrown at it quite nicely. It’s running a LAMP server to host a few personal sites.
If you’re willing to spend a bit more (close to $300 for the same specs) you can get the server down even smaller by using a slimmer case and laptop components.
With the cost of hardware dropping, I wonder if we’ll see devices like this mass marketed to the general public. It’s mainly a matter of making a nice interface for it to easily allow setting up a photo or blog site. Imagine a desktop application that would allow a user to type up a blog post, upload photos, etc., then automatically upload that content to the server.
If anyone’s curious, the hardware we bought is here. The motherboard is currently out of stock, however, as Intel has released a dual core version. I’ll update the wishlist when Newegg gets the new board in.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix
Jul 15th
There’s been a fair amount of news online about Canonical’s specialized version of Ubuntu for Atom based laptops, but the current word on it is that Canonical will only be licensing it directly to OEMs. However, there is a PPA that you can use to turn an Ubuntu Hardy install into UNR.
Just add the repository and install the applications that it contains, then log out and in and set up your new desktop.
I have mine configured as close as I can to what the default layout seems to be from the screenshots I’ve seen online.
UNR makes good use of available screen real estate (my screenshots are running at 800×600) by putting each application in a “Tab.” I installed a couple of extra apps, Deluge 1.0rc2 and Banshee 1.0, and sure enough, they automatically conformed to the layout.
UNR places it’s launchers and menus on the desktop, which is quickly accessible from the “Go Home” button in the upper-left corner (it looks like an Ubuntu logo).
I’m not crazy about the look and feel. The desktop has a nice, new, polished look to it while the applications themselves use the standard Human theme. Either are nice on their own, but they seem to clash when used together. The interface was also a little slow, but that may be due to running it inside a virtual machine, as I’ve heard that the interface makes some use of OpenGL.
Overall, it’s a nice product and most tasks are accomplished easily. This will make a great OS for the Eee PC or any other subnotebook.
Eclipse 3.3 Europa working on Ubuntu 7.04
Aug 29th
I finally got Eclipse 3.3 working on Ubuntu. After untarring to /opt, I was still experiencing several problems getting Eclipse to run. It turns out that even though I had Sun’s Java installed, /usr/bin/java was still linking to the gcj compiled version. A quick update-alternatives fixed the issue, though.
What's coming in Feisty?
Jan 30th
It’s only part-way through the development cycle for Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty Fawn” but already, some fairly interesting changes are being made. I’m not talking here about the “Big Things” such as the proprietary drivers and codecs issue, or the composite by default specification, but rather the packages that make up Feisty’s repository.
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Bleeding Edgy
Jun 6th
Because Ubuntu 6.06 was delayed, the next release, Edgy, is coming up fast, and here is my ongoing list of things I hope may be in it:
- Linux 2.6.17
- Xorg 7.1
- Gnome 2.16
- NetworkManager 0.6.3
- Firefox 2.0
- Gaim 2.0
- OpenOffice.org 2.0.x
- Rhythmbox 0.9.5
- Bittorrent 4.20.x
- Gimp 2.2.x
Updated June 29, 2006
SuSE v. Dapper — Beta4 and Flight4
Feb 21st
I’ve installed SuSE 10.1 Beta4 and Dapper Flight4 alongside each other, and thought I’d post a few thoughts.
From the SuSE release announcement:
“Beta4 has a number of ROUGH edges, so read the Most Annoying Bugs for Beta4 before you decide to download and test it.”
Boy, they weren’t kidding. The SuSE installer crashed after installing packages, and I had to log in as root and manually set up the rest of the system by hand. SuSE still doesn’t recognize my wireless card (Atheros), but that wouldn’t be such a big deal except that SuSE 9.3 worked fine with the same card. I wasn’t able to install the fglrx drivers, so I couldn’t give Xgl a try.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, was very stable, as long as I’m not running Xgl and compiz. Xgl runs ok, but compiz crashes the entire X session. I haven’t yet tried out wpa_supplicant (that’s for tommorow), but for just a standard desktop system, Ubuntu ran great, and it’s still in alpha stages.
SuSE v. Dapper — Update
Feb 13th
Just a quick update: The next installment of SuSE v. Dapper is taking longer than I had expected. Dapper Flight 4 still isn’t out yet, and while I downloaded and burned SuSE Beta3, the CD’s would not boot properly. So, I’m now planning to try Beta4 and Flight4 alongside each other. SuSE Beta4 is scheduled to come out next Thursday, and I still have no idea when Flight4 is due.
I have been keeping an up-to-date Dapper installation going on a separate partition, though, and it’s looking good.
What I’m looking for in the next trial:
- WPA support – preferably integrated in NetworkManager
- Xgl – will it run at all
- Support for advanced laptop features – suspend to disk/RAM, sleep mode, etc
- Stability/speed, etc
SuSE vs. Dapper
Jan 24th
Well, I installed SuSE 10.1 Beta 1 and the latest daily build of Dapper today, so I thought I’d post a few quick observations before going to bed.
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