Ubuntu
I finally become so sickened by Windows that I'm willing to go through the difficult transition to Ubuntu. I'm expecting trouble since I'm using a two year old Toshiba laptop (Satellite A10) and I require it to work with extended desktop covering the laptop 1024x768 display and an external 1280x1024 LCD panel. I'm willing to change any applications if I have to, but I mainly used Firefox and Open Office so there should be no problem there.
Contents
File System
The drives are all currently in NTFS format which the Ubuntu system can't natively write to.
- No problemo, just install the NTFS Configuration tool listed in synaptic and NTFS write-support can be turned on or off for internal and/or external drives. --Nad 00:11, 18 July 2007 (NZST)
- As of Gutsy Gibbon, this NTFS has big problems, and I'd recommend using FAT32 for external drives. After being removed without dismounting (it's only a matter of time before that will eventually happen) the drive can then only be mounted in read-only (-ro switch). It cannot be fixed until a disk check is run on it from a win32 machine.
- Unfortunately FAT32 is not an option for 500GB drives so NTFS is the only choice. However I found out that when NTFS drives are uncleanly dismounted and then refuse to mount in Linux, the force option can be set, for example,
- To fix uncleanly dismounted NTFS drives, install ntfsprogs with apt-get and then run ntfsfix on the appropriate device (to find which device is the problem, try tail/var/log/syslog|grep /dev/ after the failed mount message appears), then switch the device off and back on and it should mount properly.
- Unfortunately FAT32 is not an option for 500GB drives so NTFS is the only choice. However I found out that when NTFS drives are uncleanly dismounted and then refuse to mount in Linux, the force option can be set, for example,
- As of Gutsy Gibbon, this NTFS has big problems, and I'd recommend using FAT32 for external drives. After being removed without dismounting (it's only a matter of time before that will eventually happen) the drive can then only be mounted in read-only (-ro switch). It cannot be fixed until a disk check is run on it from a win32 machine.
Network
I was pleasantly surprised by how well the networking went. It has detected all my network interfaces and automatically connected to the local wireless network establishing internet access.
Display
The Xorg 1.3 drivers which were introduced in 7.10 are far superior to prior ones and have a proper graphical interface to the multi-monitor setup. I still couldn't get dual-monitor working at the proper resolutions with my Toshiba Satellite A10 though. Also I found that the i810 driver was not able to work at my external widescreen resolution of 1680x1050, but changing to the "intel" driver in my xorg.conf fixed the problem.
Ubuntu comes with Evolution by default, but this can't import email messages from my backed up Outlook Express store folder. Also I don't need all the scheduling and organisational aspect as we use the wiki for that.
Tried Thunderbird, but this also does not import from Outlook Express.
DVD Ripping
apt-get install dvdrip vobcopy
Additional Software Installed
Browser: Firefox2(pre installed)- Internet Explorer (It's useful to be able to run Internet Explorer for web development, see ies4linux
- Comms: Thunderbird, Skype, Pidgin
- SMTP Server: Exim4, using local SMTP to send instead of ISP
- Local SMTP not working reliably, tests ok for my POP, but not sending to others, changed back to ISP
- Text Editor: Geany - best editor I've found so far - available for *ux/osx/win, apt-get on Debian/Ubuntu
Word processor: OpenOffice2 Writer(pre installed)Spreadsheet: OpenOffice2 Calc(pre installed)- Image Editor: GIMP
- Vector Graphics: InkScape
- Media player: VLC (this worked out of the box for all my media, the default "Movie Player" needed to download codecs and couldn't find many of them)
- NTFS Configuration Tool (this may be installed by default now, check first)
- P2P: Azureus
Server Software & Utilities
To install server software for running a local development environment for our wiki work, just run through the necessary items in the Debian Post Install.
Sharing files with Samba
The file sharing is quite simple to set up, just go to "Shared Folders" in System/Administration and enable sharing via SMB. You'll also need to edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and set browseable and writeable to "yes", and then add a user and password using smbpasswd -a username. Then reload the service through init.d.
Windows Emulator (Wine)
The windows emulator allows practically seamless integration of native windows applications into the Linux desktop environment. Internet Explorer is more difficult to set up in it than other applications due to its tight integration with the windows internal components, but a package is available allowing easy installation of multiple simultaneous Internet Explorer versions.
Below is a screenshot of my local laptop running Ubuntu. As you can see all the open windows are integrated naturally into the normal desktop environment but some of them are windows applications and some native Linux ones. The top browser window is Internet Explorer 6 running in windows emulation, but the bottom one is Ubuntu's Firefox. Music is playing from the Windows emulated Winamp in the top right, and the middle application is a Windows-only family tree program. I was able to drop a folder of music directly into the Winamp window to play it, and all file paths and open/save dialogue boxes can navigate the entire Linux directory tree just like a native application behaves.
