Testing
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Testing
9.04 is here and it’s obviously been awhile. Many new things in Ubuntu, better hardware support, less bugs, and Ubuntu has gone many places since then. Ubuntu has invaded the lucrative netbook segment with adoption by many large vendors.
If you have not heard about Dropbox let me tell you firsthand it’s by far the best file sync utility to keep your files synced up between your Linux, Mac, and Windows machines and also making them accessible through the web. After the initial upload all changes to the files are uploaded rather than the file itself all over again. You can roll back a file to any previous version and you can share your folders to a workgroup or your friends or even the public.
Head on over to http://www.getdropbox.com and see the preview and sign up for some free space. There are Ubuntu .deb files for easy installation (Even 9.04) and the development is active. It uses Amazon’s S3 cloud platform for the backend and it’s very efficient and robust.
Press Alt-F2 and type update-manager –devel-release
Update Manager will update and show a button saying new release available.
Once you’ve upgraded wait about 24 hours and update again and you “should” have the full version of 8.04 LTS plus any recent updates.
Of course some will just want to start fresh as well.
I have to say that this is by far the buggiest beta release of Ubuntu I’ve ever used. I question if it’s a good idea to release on the stated date or to push it off for a few more weeks.
First off sudo does not work because it’s looking for the hostname and if it’s not Ubuntu or in the hosts file it locks you out of doing most administrative tasks. The fix is to boot into recovery mode as root and edit the file and reboot.
Second synergy is completely broken to the point it requires it to be started as root to even be usable. That’s fine, but I’d rather it’d be fixed to work properly. Also let me discover the issue above.
Trying to load up the hardware drivers under System > Administration > Hardware Drivers crashes.
Also the network configuration, firefox, and even the update utility have all crashed on me.
To say the least I feel that this release is still Alpha quality and to call it a Beta release does nobody any good. I hope they decide to push this off for a bit to resolve some of these issues. I’ve probably burned up that crash report tool in the short time I’ve upgraded and hope that updates will eventually fix some of these problems.
Also does anyone else think it’s time for a little visual upgrade?
We’ll between updates in parallels my Ubuntu 7.10 which was a upgrade from 7.04 quit working so I decided to start off fresh. After a few problems I believe I’ve come up with a doable combo. Personally this should just work and the Parallels guys need to get their act together with Linux support. Fortunately I’m a tolerant person and like the challenge of getting something working. Using the 7.10 i386 desktop ISO file I selected safe graphics mode. Another option may be a text based installer on the alternate cd, but so far safe graphics is working. One problem will be that the main screen will freeze. No big problem. Hit ctrl+alt+f1 and hit enter and you have a prompt.
type: startx
Eventually the desktop will pop up. Start the installer and it should finish after you answer all the questions.
I’d like to appeal to the Ubuntu(Xbuntu) community today. With news that Intel has defected from the $100 laptop for every child organization, and apparently did everything to thwart it in it’s own interests, we could do better by developing a highly supported reference distro for low powered devices like the XO, internet tablets and such. Ubuntu is an organization uniquely situated to bring forth the kind of open source and professional resources needed to benefit this project and spread Linux to needy children all over the world. Intel and Microsoft are clearly scared of the spreading influence of the OLPC program as seen that their only desire was to introduce their “Classmate” which was powered by Windows. Kids and poor countries would benefit more to have a Linux based computer and systems to learn to use and build around than an Wintel based system that they might likely spend more time fixing and defending against all the little issues that come about because of Windows itself. The Ubuntu community has been great at building a distribution that “Just Works” and to see a focus on the smaller devices out there would greatly benefit everyone involved.
Sorry guys my experiment with a Wiki was less than I had hoped for. I’ve been extremely busy, but have restored the website and will be adding new stuff over the next week or so.
If your camera supports an RAW image format you can do a lot more to make the image better than going with the camera’s save as jpeg options. Once an image is saved to jpeg the camera throws away the information used to build the image. RAW is basically the raw information taken from the CCD in the digital camera with little or no post processing.
In Ubuntu adding RAW support to gimp is easy.
Just do: sudo apt-get install gimp-ufraw
Restart the gimp if you’re using it and then open a raw image and you get to adjust it before it’s placed into the Gimp.
Sorry been out sick all last week.
Lots to come though if you’re interested in digital photography!