Posts Tagged ‘ubuntu’

So i bought a Netbook 10″ today…

Written by Arnan on September 23, 2008 – 10:40 pm

And returned it…

This one. I bought it from a colleague for a mere 150 euros. And was really happy about it. Reason for selling: “We melted the control key on the right and it’s too small”. No big deal i thought. So i forked over the 150 euros almost instantly after seeing it boot.
The happiness continued for a while but lessened when i noticed the “backspace” and “1″ keys didn’t respond. At first i blamed Ubuntu for picking the wrong keyboard layout. But no… It appears that some keys just didn’t work. I blame the melting of the control key since the keyboard connector i directly under it. Yes i took apart the laptop to fix it. And so did a colleague who tried the same.

To no avail. So, i need to save a bunch more money to buy me another :) .

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An amazing discovery…

Written by Arnan on September 13, 2008 – 5:56 pm

So here i was again. Installed a new harddisk, SATAII, in my server and went on with installing Ubuntu, since that still is a bit the distro of choice for some reason. I keep coming back to it…

Anyway, installed the whole thing. Ran updates and all seemed fine. Were it not that i can not log in in the regular Gnome session. I have to use the failsafe one. Which obviously omits some packages.
Further investigation shows me that my videocard is problematic due to a bug in Xorg (the app that handles visual output and basically governs the desktop). Ultrabummer! The video card is onboard and i thought it would be well suited for server use… And it would be if Xorg would support the thing.
This very well explains why Fedora kept screwing up after updates… Since Xorg was updated too. *sigh*.

So i have 4 options at the moment:
1. Install the *actual* server version of Ubuntu which does not use a desktop and with that go back in time 20 years with terminal.

or

2. Install the server version of ubuntu and somehow make Gnome work with it on some basic level comparable with the failsafe mode from Ubuntu.

or

3. Find another working PCI / PCI-express video card and use that for my desktop installation.

or

4. Use Windows. Which in my idea is no real option since i want a proper and secure webserver (with a system of which i know how it works) that has SSH and more of those things. In my experience it does not run well (if at all) on Windows.

My goal was to install a small server with a desktop and not use terminal at all, or limit it to an absolute minimum if possible. I’m not too fond of terminal/shell since i find it limiting, chaotic and inefficient. However, it works well otherwise. I’m spoiled with mice, colors, admin apps and remote desktop.

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Ha!, now everyone can see i’m not a fanboy!

Written by Arnan on September 13, 2008 – 11:18 am

Lately, starting with january 2007, it seems that i have made a 180 degrees turn from Microsoft, and Linux for that matter) to Apple.
And so should everyone at some point and level. My strong preference for Apple products has some people led to believe i turned into an biased fanboy…

None of that from now on! BEHOLD!

So, there you have it! Ultimate proof of my non-biasedness! An Ubuntu fleece jacket.
It’s warm, seems of good quality, it’s sexy and is really cheap compared to other coats/jackets.
And ofcourse it looks spiffy and not nerdy at all.

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Ubuntu 8.04 LTS… Heck no!

Written by Arnan on September 7, 2008 – 1:41 pm

Geez, all night i’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong. The liveCD won’t book properly. It logs me in, hangs and again requires me to login. It’s a loop.
When i install Ubuntu directly it seems fine, installs. And on first boot requires me to log in, hangs, and asks again for my login.

Fine, broken distro/download… reassuring, but fret not! I still had Ubuntu 7.04. So i installed that. It booted fine. 224 updates. Installed those with the intention to run “apt-get dist-upgrade” (or whatever upgrades the distro these days) right after it. All went fine until the kernel updates were done. I had to reboot for that, naturally, and Ubuntu wouldn’t boot because my harddrive had bad blocks. Running fsck failed because of all he badness on my disk.

Further examination of the disk in another computer told me there are NO bad blocks and linux lied to me… Anyway, putting the disk back in it’s own case i tried to boot again, it booted. Miraculously. But since all updates were now installed it would not let me log in… Turns out Fedora died on me because of bad blocks a few days ago… I am investigating things here.

Linux, again, turns out to be utter rubbish!

Earlier, when i was still using this thing for a PC (well over 8 months ago) i ran Ubuntu 7.04 just fine on it. And Fedora too. Well, if some updates in Ubuntu break everything. Fuck all! It’s another distribution for me. Fedora being the logical choice since i know that one also.

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