Looking Cool/Screenlets

I had seen some desktop pictures with floating clocks and other neat eye candy and wondered where it came from. Screenlets has several small programs you can use to spice up your desktop. While I am not using the clock, I am using a weather screenlet and a screenlet that gives me information about my computer (as well as the time).

The screenlets web site lists many of their screenlets (maps, calendars, copy/paste lists, e-mail, notes, etc) and has much better screen shots. I used these directions to install the package. (which amounted to adding deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gilir/ubuntu gutsy main universe to your third party repositories and then installing screenlets).

After the instillation, screenlets appeared in my menu under preferences. When you start screenlets, it shows you a list of screenlets and allows you to start them by clicking launch/add. Its all intuitive and easy. You can move them to any location you choose no your desktop and increase or decrease the size. While they are transparent, it is difficult to see behind them meaning they may take up some screen real estate. Cool, easy, and information I want at a glance.

Install Ubuntu from Windows

It looks like the next version of Ubuntu (8.04) will allow users to install Ubuntu from Windows. Arstechnica has some screen shots of the new installer.

I hope this gets more people to start using linux.

While I like this change and I think Ubuntu, Novel (Opensuse), Linux Mint, and many others have great distribution, I hope someone begins to improve the multimedia plugins for Firefox. While Mplayer does a good job, it still doesn't allow me to fast forward like the windows media player plugin for the Windows version of Firefox. I watch cycling on the internet and frequently when I watch an archived (ie not live) race, I use Windows because I can fast forward or rewind much easier. I don't boot into Windows often, but that is the most common reason.

That's my two cents about what I would like to see improved.

Sbackup

I recently moved from Linux Mint to ubuntu Hardy (8.04) Alpha 4 to Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty Gibbon. I've changed my linux distro about six times since November/December. Since I store most of my information (files) on the windows partition of my computer, it really isn't that hard (I'm dual booting). While I have yet to loose any information while I am distro hoping, I do back-up my files before I move.

I used to burn a DVD or two. Since my brother bought me a large external hard drive, I can now use that. This time I experimented with Sbackup. The program is easy to use. You tell it which directories you want to back-up and where to send the back-up. You can tell it to back-up at certain intervals and it looks like it will back-up only the changes it finds to the directories you choose.

While it looks cool and probably works great, the problem I had was that I could not tell when the last back-up occurred. For me, I'm not interested in timed back ups or regular back-up as my external hard drive is not always attached. Also, even though I told the program to save the files to my external drive, both times I used it the files were save to the default location. I thought I changed the settings before I began the back-up process, but it is possible that I did not (ie it could be my fault).

Sbackup looks really easy to use. I may try it again, but for me it is also easy to just choose the files/directories I want to back-up and move them. If I had my exterior hard drive attached all the time, it would be a better program for me. Another issue is that Sbackup does not show you the progress of the back-up nor tell you when it is done. In looking at the sourceforge project, it looks like that has been a feature request for some time.

This is a cool program. It is not perfect. If you are looking for something to back-up your desktop on a regular basis, this might be what you are looking for. For information visit the Sourceforge project or get instructions here or here.

You can install Sbackup by opening a terminal and typing:

sudo apt-get install sbackup

Hardy Heron Alpha 4

I decided to install the Alpha of the upcoming Ubuntu distribution. I was hoping it would be stable enough that I could use it for a while, but I'll be running another version of Linux soon. After running from the CD, I decided to install it because it was so quick. From the CD the system seemed to operate very fast. I know that the system is quicker than my former Linux Mint set-up, but that may be because there are fewer programs installed.

This alpha is supposed to have Xorg 7.3. The alpha 4 wiki says,Xorg 7.3 has "an emphasis on better autoconfiguration with a minimal configuration file." I couldn't get compiz to work and I don't know if the problem is the Nvidia drivers or what and I didn't feel like experimenting too much as this is an alpha release.

After I installed the updates, the restricted drivers icon appeared. I'm not sure it is working as it did not get my broadcom wireless card working. It has worked using the restricted drivers tool in past versions of Ubuntu. Combine that with compiz not working and that was my guess for a culprit. Again, I didn't want to spend too much time as I would likely have to re-install everything later.

The Hardy Heron wiki that discusses the new features can be found here. Above are two pictures of the new gnome system monitor.

Moving to Linux

I've taken a break from trying distros for a bit. I've been expirementing with my main computer. I have the important stuff back-ed up, but I'd like to find a better back-up tool. I may experiment with a few different back-up tools and see how they go.

Until then, here is a cool page with open source alternatives to commonly used software. There were some programs on this list that I had never heard of. While this is a neat list, you might also use Osalt to find open source alternatives to programs you use.

Stata/Linux

I installed Stata10 in Linux Mint 4 which is based on Ubuntu Linux 7.10. It took me a while to figure this out. I installed the dynamically linked version thinking it would just work. It did not. I was missing one small line of code.

When I tried to start stata using the ./xstata command from the command line I received the error:
./xstata: error while loading shared libraries: libtiff.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The simple solution was to link the libtiff.so.3 file to libtiff.so.4. I had no idea to do this or why. These are files used in the appearance of the graphical user interface. The simple solution was to go to the directory /usr/lib which is where the files were. So I used the command cd /usr/lib and this took me to the correct directory.

I linked the two files using the command:
ln -s libtiff.so.4 libtiff.so.3

Now the command ./xstata brings up Stata with a graphical user interface (GUI) that is dynamically linked rather than statistically linked. And, yes, I have no idea what that means other than it should take up fewer resources. This only cost me a few hours of my life.

File Manager as Root

I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but I get frustrated not being able to create folders using the nautilus file manager because I do not have the authority (permission).

If you go to a terminal and type gksudo nautilus it will run nautilus as if you are the root user and have full authority to create folders and erase them. This is written mostly for me.

Fedora 8 (Cont)

Well, the quickest thing to say is that I am back using Linux Mint. Fedora kept hanging on install, so I decided to go back. The big plus in Fedora was the increased range in my wireless card. I think this was due to installing the Windows driver through ndiswrapper, so instead of using the extremely easy restricted drivers function in Linux Mint, I installed the driver using ndiswrapper. It seems to be working well.

A couple of thoughts. Fedora did install quickly and easily. The install program took care of most everything. By default, Linux Mint wanted to reformat my hard drive which would delete my Windows partition. I had to know a little (not much) about what I was doing to keep the Windows partition using Linux Mint.

Now after being installed, Linux Mint is great. I was mainly using this link to install items in Fedora. Most of the items are installed from the command line while I cut and pasted commands. Linux Mint rules because many of the items such as flash, java, codecs, etc come pre-installed in Linux Mint.

A guy in London who goes by Dangermouse wrote some install scripts that look great, but I did not use them. If you are installing Fedora, you might consider them to save time.

I have nothing against Fedora, I just found Linux Mint works better for me. It installed quickly again, updated faster than Fedora, has OpenOffice, codecs, java, flash and other things installed by default. Its based on Ubuntu so I can use the Ubuntu forums if I want help.

Also, if you are going to use Ndiswrapper to install you wireless card, you might consider visiting the ndiswrapper site at sourceforge.net. Under the documents/wiki section they have instructions on using ndiswrapper as well as a list of cards. The list of cards had some useful advice to me on where to get the driver for my card and why not to use the driver I used in previous versions of Ubuntu. I used this informative guide to install my Dell 1390 wireless mini card (which is based on the broadcom chipset). I used the R140747.exe file from Dell to get my wireless driver rather than R151517.exe file suggested by the above tutorial based on comments from the Ndiswrapper site.

Of course, I could have used the restricted drivers instillation guide that shows up in Ubuntu and Linux Mint. That worked last time, but I'm hoping this gives me better range for my wireless needs.

Fedora 8

I'm on to my next linux distro. I've installed Fedora 8 over the Linux Mint instillation. My initial reaction so far has been much less than favorable. Right now I am waiting for the system to finish installing OpenOffice. The installer keeps fading out (crashing) and coming back so it is taking a long time.

Let's start from the beginning. I downloaded the live CD and used it for a few minutes. It is a nice CD that downloaded easily. When I ran the live CD it did not recognize my wireless card, but I did not expect it to. I noticed there was no OpenOffice, but it had abiword and I was wondering if that was just the live version or if OpenOffice would install on the hard drive with the OS.

I told the system to go ahead and install on the hard drive. After a few minutes and a few easy questions later, I was up and running in Fedora 8. Install was easy. Fedora recognized my MS Windows partition and left it in tact. During instillation, Fedora asked if I wanted to erase all of my linux partitions and I told it to go ahead. I had two linux partitions (plus swap) before, but they were erased into one linux partition and one swap. Not a bit deal.

Again, the initial instillation was fast. I connected to the internet via a wired connection and Fedora said it has about 17 updates. That was a bit misleading as those seven updates took over an hour to download and install. If might have been only 17, but they must have been large. Fedora did the download and install with little input from me. Still going good.

The boot loader (Grub) is interesting. It says that it will boot into Fedora and counts down for about 5 seconds. I can push any key for a menu. It then gives me the option of booting into Fedora or Other. If I choose Other, I can boot into Windows. Its like Fedora does not want to speak the name of MS Windows.

Now I was on to install the wireless drivers. I have a broadcom wireless chipset (Dell 1390 mini wireless card using the Broadcom chipset). Under Linux Mint I was not getting the range I wanted so I decided to use ndiswrapper to install the drivers. This ended up being much more trouble than I thought it would be. More on my next post.

Linux Mint

I cannot say that I have left the Ubuntu fold because Linux Mintis based on Ubuntu. Linux Mint is Ubuntu set up the way I like it. This version is based on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gusty Gibbon). I upgraded form 7.04 to 7.10 and then did a fresh install for Linux Mint.

This is the same laptop, Dell Inspriron e1705 with an Nvidia Go graphics card and a broadcom wireless card. They installed great using the restricted drivers utility from Ubunutu. There is a wireless network at work that with a weak signal that I can only hit when I'm booted under XP. For some reason, when I am in Linux Mint, the weak connection is not as reliable. Mint/Ubuntu has a more reliable connection on my home network than XP, but I don't know why one works better in one circumstance and the other works better in a different environment.

Compiz works great out of the box. I did have to install the control center. I don't understand why it is not standard in Mint or Ubuntu. I changed a few things on the bottom panel but not much. I like gnome (the desktop environment) because I can set things up however I want.

Like Ubuntu, Mint recognized my Microsoft Windows partition by default and allows me to read and write to it without any set-up on my part. My Windows partition is much larger, so that is where I store most of my files.






The menu is one of the differences between Mint and Ubuntu. I used Suse Linux before moving to Ubuntu. One thing I missed from Suse was the menu that was more involved. One click on the menu bar and you have a better idea of where to go to start a program. The search bar at the bottom of the menu is a search of programs in the menu rather than a search of the drives (ie beagle or google desktop) search. I would guess that I can change it, but I haven't looked into that yet. I like this menu system better than the default gnome menu. Not a big difference, but again - Mint is Ubuntu set up the way I like it.

Another advantage for Mint was that it comes with multimedia codecs installed. I didn't have to do anything. Some videos worked in Ubuntu and some did not. Ubuntu 7.10 may not have worked correctly because I upgraded rather than did a fresh install, but Mint has the codecs working well with no effort on my part.

I haven't used the desktop search functions much, but the default search in the Nautilus File Browser has not been exceptional. I'm not sure what it is searching, but it misses a lot of the files that Google Desktop search finds on the XP side. Mint comes with Tracker as a search tool. I haven't properly run it through its paces to determine how good it is. Google Desktop search is out for linux and at some point, I'm sure I'll try to use it.

Another difference between Ubuntu and Mint is with the software portal. I like the Ubuntu add/remove tool, but Mint has a different approach. The software portal takes you to a web page that lists programs that are ready to be installed. I've added Adobe Acrobat, Opera (a web browser) and Open Arena (a first person shooter game). While Ubuntu's list of programs is much larger, Mint's software portal could not be easier and the program's work great. I was never able to install Opera without problems in Ubuntu. It works without issues in Mint. Again, this may be because I did a fresh install of Mint, but I did not get Opera working well in Ubuntu 7.04 when I did do a fresh install.

Since the two distributions are so similar, most programs that will work on Ubuntu will work on Mint. I installed R, the open source statistical program on Mint and it appears to work. I have not used it extensively, but it has worked the few times I've used it.

The update process is also a bit different. Mint lets you know when updates are available with an icon on the panel bar just like Ubuntu. The difference is that Mint assigns the updates a number based on how reliable the update it. Mint installs updates rated 3 or higher by default. It does not install other updates without a user override. I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes, but it is a difference.

Mint also has a large number of great looking backgrounds to choose from. I am using the Christmas screen because I like the look. There are several great looking backgrounds on the Linux Mint theme for the user to chose from. A sample of the backgrounds can be found here.

Right now, I'm staying with Linux Mint. If you look at the screens above closely, you will notice that I downloaded the iso for Fedora 8. I don't think I am going to switch, but I would like to try it out. The problem is that Mint is working so well, I don't really want to install Fedora over it, but I might. (it has pulse audio and I've haven't used RPMs yet).