The Linux Experiment

Well I managed to fix my compositing problem but I honestly don’t know why it worked. Basically I went into the System Settings > Desktop > Desktop Effects menu and manually turned off all desktop effects. Next I used jockey-text to disable the ATI driver. After a quick restart I re-enabled the ATI driver and restarted again. Once I logged in I went back into the System Settings > Desktop > Desktop Effects menu and enabled desktop effects. This magically worked… but only until I restarted. In order to actually get it to start enabled I had to go back into System Settings > Desktop > Desktop Effects and then click on the Advanced tab and then disable functionality checks. I am sure this is dangerous or something but its the only way I can get my computer to restart with the effects enabled by default.

I’m really starting to hate this graphics card…

After giving up on installing openSUSE 11.2 (the installer insisted on failing during the partition stage) I am now successfully dual booting Windows 7 and Kubuntu 9.10. On the Kubuntu side of things I must say that overall I am impressed. It is a much sleeker and more refined KDE experience than I was treated to on Fedora and I am enjoying it thus far.

That’s not to say it is without it’s own set of problems though Once again my graphics card does not play nice, although this time I place the blame firmly on Kubuntu. The KDE front end for jockey, otherwise known as Hardware Drivers to the *buntu folk, completely failed at activating my ATI driver. I was finally able to enable the driver by using the text version of jockey, “jockey-text” in the terminal, but that still didn’t solve all of my problems. Now the system uses the correct driver but refuses to enable compositing for some reason. -sigh-

Looks like I have a long afternoon of IRC ahead of me…

Some readers may recall all of the attempts that I’ve made in the past to synchronize my Blackberry with Mozilla’s Thunderbird email and calendar client. During each of these tries, I had relied on the OpenSync framework, along with the Barry project for communication with my phone, and a number of different solutions to link into Thunderbird. At various times, these included the opensync-plugin-iceowl, opensync-plugin-sunbird, and bluezync packages, none of which yielded success.

While running GNOME on my Debian laptop, I had managed to successfully synchronize my phone with the Evolution mail client. Even so, I continued to work at Thunderbird synchronization because I disliked Evolution, seeing it as a Microsoft Outlook clone, which is a platform that I have had considerable problems with in the past.

With my recent installation of Kubuntu 9.10 on my PC, I have been exposed to the Kontact PIM suite, and have thus far been impressed. Kmail is a solid email client, although the way that it handles the setup of multiple email accounts is confusing to say the least, forcing the user to create a sending, receiving, and identity object for each account, and then to link them together. Likewise, Kontact is a decent application, but is sorely lacking basic GUI configuration options, something I never thought that I would say about a KDE app. Finally, Kalendar does everything that one would expect, and allows the user to display appointments in a number of useful ways. All have excellent integration, and live in a tray widget that uses the native KDE notifications system to let me know when something important has happened.

Most importantly however, I managed to get the entire Kontact suite to sync with my Blackberry after about five minutes of playing around in the terminal. Unlike during previous installation attempts, I found the latest stable Barry packages available in my repositories, so installation was a snap. I simply added the following packages to my system:

• libopensync0 v0.22-2
• multisync-tools v0.92
• libbarry0 v0.14-2.1
• opensync-plugin-kdepim v0.22-4
• opensync-plugin-barry v0.14-2.1

From a terminal, I then used the msynctool application and the following steps to do a little bit of configuration:

1. msynctool –listplugins if the install went well, this command should list both kdepim-sync and barry-sync as available plugins
2. msynctool –addgroup BB create an OpenSync sync profile for my Blackberry called BB
3. msynctool –addmember BB barry-sync add the barry-sync plugin to the BB sync group
4. msynctool –addmember BB kdepim-sync add the kdepim-sync plugin to the BB sync group
5. msynctool –showgroup BB this lists each of the plugins that we just added to the BB sync group, along with their member numbers. In my case, barry-sync was member number 1, and kdepim-sync was member number 2. The output also showed that while barry-sync still needed to be configured, kdepim-sync had no configuration options to be set.
6. msynctool –configure BB 1 configures member number 1 of the sync group BB. In my case, this was barry-sync, and simply popped a config file in the nano text editor. All that had to be changed in the file was the PIN of the Blackberry that the plugin would attempt to sync with.
7. msynctool –sync BB actually performed the synchronization process. For safety’s sake, I made sure that Kontact was fully closed before running this command.

And that’s it! In the future, I simply have to run the msynctool –sync BB command to synchronize my Blackberry with Kontact. That’s one more reason to stick with Linux – Blackberry synchronization that isn’t tied to Microsoft Outlook!

Well it’s official, the year is now 2010 and we still don’t have flying cars.

The End

2010 also marks the end of The Linux Experiment. I can honestly say that the last four solid months of Linux use has taught me a lot. In reflection of this I decided to look back at what I had originally wrote about my goals of this experiment and see just how many of them I had accomplished.

• I will have learned enough of the ins and outs to be as comfortable within a Linux environment as I current am within a Windows one.
  • This one is a bit tricky to answer. I am far more familiar and comfortable with Linux now than I have ever been before. However I still do not understand a number of things. For example the Linux file system confuses me to no end. What is the difference between /bin/ and /sbin/? Or why do some things end up in /etc/ and others in /var/ or even /opt/? Clearly I have some room to improve here.
• My bonus goal is to have a fully functional, self-created, program that runs native to Linux.
  • This one I was actually able to realize. Not only did I have a native OpenGL program running, but in recent weeks I have even created cross-platform .NET/Mono based applications. In addition Linux has proven time and again that it is the platform for web development. I can definitely see myself utilizing it as such in the future.

Fedora

Fedora has been both a terrible nightmare and an absolute pleasure. I have had more problems getting things to just work on this distribution that I care to even remember. Yet time and time again there was something about Fedora that just kept pulling me back in. Perhaps it was the challenge of trying to master a power user’s distribution of choice. Or maybe it was just pure stubbornness. The fact remains that with the exception of Fedora 12 being incompatible with my graphics hardware there was nothing I haven’t overcome.

So would I recommend Fedora to someone? Well… yes and no. Fedora has a rock solid community and lives right on the cutting edge (what? I’m already running KDE 4.3.4??) but it does not make things easy. Now that most distributions have moved up to the 2.6.31 kernel there is really less of a reason for me to recommend the cutting edge simply as a way to get decent hardware support. Obviously if your machine is even newer than mine than perhaps Fedora is still your only stable ticket to that support, but for most users I think there are far better alternatives. Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy Fedora and from what I have read it has come a long way in recent years, I just don’t think I will be using it again anytime soon.

The Future

Today will bring some changes to my computing setup as I plan on removing Fedora and trying out two new KDE distributions, OpenSUSE and Kubuntu, just to see which one I prefer. In addition I will be dual booting with Windows 7 for the first time. I will be sure to keep everyone up to date with my experiences as I do so.

As we here at The Linux Experiment debate where to take the experiment moving forward, be sure to check back for updates on our new experiences!

With the linux experiment coming to an end, and my Vista PC requiring a reinstall, I decided to take the leap and go all linux all the time. To that end, I’ve installed Kubuntu on my desktop PC.

I would like to be able to report that the Kubuntu install experience was better than the Debian one, or even on par with a Windows install. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case.

My machine contains three 500GB hard drives. One is used as the system drive, while an integrated hardware RAID controller binds the other two together as a RAID1 array. Under Windows, this setup worked perfectly. Under Kubuntu, it crashed the graphical installer, and threw the text-based installer into fits of rage.

With plenty of help from the #kubuntu IRC channel on freenode, I managed to complete the Kubuntu install by running it with the two RAID drives disconnected from the motherboard. After finishing the install, I shut down, reconnected the RAID drives, and booted back up. At this point, the RAID drives were visible from Dolphin, but appeared as two discrete drives.

It was explained to me via this article that the hardware RAID support that I had always enjoyed under windows was in fact a ‘fake RAID,’ and is not supported on Linux. Instead, I need to reformat the two drives, and then link them together with a software RAID. More on that process in a later post, once I figure out how to actually do it.

At this point, I have my desktop back up and running, reasonably customized, and looking good. After trying KDE’s default Amarok media player and failing to figure out how to properly import an m3u playlist, I opted to use Gnome’s Banshee player for the time being instead. It is a predictable yet stable iTunes clone that has proved more than capable of handling my library for the time being. I will probably look into Amarok and a few other media players in the future. On that note, if you’re having trouble playing your MP3 files on Linux, check out this post on the ubuntu forums for information about a few of the necessary GStreamer plugins.

For now, my main tasks include setting up my RAID array, getting my ergonomic bluetooth wireless mouse working, and working out folder and printer sharing on our local Windows network. In addition, I would like to set up a Windows XP image inside of Sun’s Virtual Box so that I can continue to use Microsoft Visual Studio, the only Windows application that I’ve yet to find a Linux replacement for.

This is just the beginning of the next chapter of my own personal Linux experiment; stay tuned for more excitement.

This post first appeared at Index out of Bounds.

Linux is great for web development, but not necessarily for the obvious reasons. The reason I find developing websites and server programs much better on a Linux machine than on a Windows machine is as simple as the following three letters SSH.

SSH stands for Secure SHell and is a way to remotely log into a server over a secure connection. While you can connect to SSH shares in Windows, connecting to one under Linux is a far more integrated experience. For example in KDE’s Dolphin you can connect to the SSH share right within the file browser itself. Then, as you do work, changes can be reflected instantly to the remote server. This saves you a lot of time instead of having to use (S)FTP to transfer files to and from the server. GNOME also has a similar ability through its Connect to Server menu.

Again there are Windows programs that will mirror changes in a local directory to a remote server through SSH but as far as I know Windows Explorer itself does not have this ability (FTP but no SSH?). So next time you are in the mood for web dev, give Linux a shot!

Let me start off by saying that my experience thus far (over the last 24 hours) with Fedora 12 – Constantine has been the complete opposite from Tyler’s.  For the most part, at any rate.  While I, too attempted to do a preupgrade (from terminal) to Constantine and had it fail due to an insufficiently sized /boot partition – the 200 MB that it suggests on install is simply not enough – my clean install attempt went smooth as silk.

After backing everything important (user folder) up to my server, which over gigabit ethernet took all of 12 minutes, I popped the Fedora 12 x86_64 DVD into my drive and restarted.   Installation and drive partitioning was easy, as was customizing my installation repositories to include Fedora 12 x86_64 and Fedora 12 x86_64 updates – this has saved me a lot of headaches now, I’m sure.  I also decided this time around to add KDE at boot time, just to see if this would simplify my problems with that environment; more on that in a later post, I’m sure.

As of right now I’m running a stable – though desktop effects-less – Gnome environment.  Boot time over Fedora 11 has significantly improved, and the boot animation is a great improvement over the scrolling bar from Fedora 11.  In addition, off the bat my computer automatically supported native resolution (no-go without drivers in Fedora 11) and screen brightness changing (same story there in Leonidas).

One other thing that GREATLY excites me – folder mounting of my Windows Home Server shares has increased in speed tenfold.  It’s almost instant now, much like it would be in Windows – fantastic!

Though frustrated by the idea of having to re-configure Wine and vpnc (that took me FOREVER!), and waiting for nVidia or a kmod driver to come out that supports my GeForce 8600M GS for enabling desktop effects and my beloved Gnome DO, I’m pleasantly surprised by my experience thus far.

More to come soon!

With the recent release of Fedora 12 it is high time that I upgrade from my existing Fedora 11 install to the new wonders that surely await me. So I hopped over to google and did a quick search and came across the official documentation to upgrade Fedora. My plan was to try and upgrade to see how it works and then eventually do a full re-install just to clear out any cobwebs that have developed over the past couple of months. Without further ado here we go!

Attempt #1: Upgrade

Because the Fedora repositories now use LZMA as the compression algorithm for packages the first thing I needed to do was upgrade rpm

yum update rpm

Next I needed to add rawhide (the current software repository) to my list of repositories.

yum –enablerepo=rawhide –skip-broken upgrade

Once that was done I ran a simple update and was presented with literally thousands of updates.

That's a lot of updates!

Unfortunately this failed a dependency resolution. Doing some more reading I found out that the dependencies might in fact be OK, but that the older version of yum just can’t resolve them correctly. So I tried updating yum to see if that would make a difference.

yum upgrade yum

Trying once again I was met with utter failure. Still unresolved dependencies! Turning back to the Internet I found out that Fedora actually maintains a separate set of instructions which include the use of a graphical upgrader! Entering:

yum install preupgrade

preupgrade

and I had the upgrade wizard running on my screen. A couple of quick clicks and I was off to the races. I started the download phase and went to bed as I figured it could take a while to complete.

In the morning I was presented with a dialog telling me to restart, which I did. On the next boot a Fedora installer appeared and began to fully install the system. All was going well until disaster struck.

There was an error running your transaction for the following reason(s): insufficient disk space.

Clicking the details arrow gave me more information saying that

You need more space on the following file systems:

18 M on /mnt/sysimage/boot

With no other options I clicked Exit Installer and hopped for the best. Eventually I had to hit the power button on my computer to restart it. Thankfully this allowed me to reboot into my existing Fedora 11 install.

Attempt #2: Re-Install KDE Live CD

After giving up on trying an upgrade I decided to simply download the newest version of the Fedora 12 x64 KDE Live CD. Unfortunately rather than being a smooth installation I had the installer itself crash on me at least 4 different times. Figuring it might be an issue with the x64 version I even tried installing from the Fedora 12 x86 KDE Live CD which ultimately had the same issues. All of these attempts had trashed the data on my hard drive – good thing I did a back up first!

Attempt #3: Re-Install DVD

Getting frustrated I then turned to the old trusty DVD install which I had used previously to install Fedora 11. The unfortunate part about installing Fedora this way is that it defaults to a GNOME desktop. Yes, true, you can select KDE from the installer but last time I did that I got a hodgepodge of KDE with GNOME apps everywhere. Even my network manager was a GNOME application.

Being very careful I inspected the package selections and tried to make this install as KDE-ish as possible. I noticed that even after selecting KDE as your desktop environment, Fedora defaults to installing the GNOME network manager so I deselected that and found knetworkmanager instead. I also added a few other programs, themes, icon sets, etc. that I thought would be useful. Finally I added Armacycles Advanced for install, because honestly it’s great.

If you haven't played it DO IT NOW

Hitting Next the install began. 2,074 packages and counting…

A quick reboot later and I was presented with the install and configuration wizard where I set up my user accounts and system date & time. The install was a success.

Not Problem Free

My install, while complete, is not without its fair share of problems. The graphics module that I had been using with great success under Fedora 11 is just not present in Fedora 12. I googled the problem and it seems that they have yet to release a version for Fedora 12. Without proper graphics drivers my system stability is suffering greatly.

In addition KPackageKit is incredibly slow for some unknown reason. It’s slow to launch, slow to respond, and slow to close. I hope this is something that can be rectified shortly.

Other than that I don’t really have many complaints. The boot time on this version of Fedora is much faster and I can only assume with the new 2.6.31.5-127 kernel that the overall hardware compatibility has improved as well.

Stay tuned for my first impressions in a later post.

My New Desktop

Here is my new desktop. If you look closely you can even see some of the graphical issues that plague my system.

Generally, after using a Windows machine for close to a year, it gets bogged down and slow and benefits greatly from a reinstall. After about 2 months of using Linux, and installing three different desktop managers on top of one another, I’ve found the same with my Linux install.

I attribute most of the problems that I’ve been having to the relationship between XFCE and KDE. After installing KDE and playing with it for one evening, I hightailed it back to XFCE, and found that many of  the options that I set in KDE leeched their way back into XFCE.

For instance, all of the window decoration that I set in KDE, the default web browser and file manager all persist in XFCE. Thanks to the light weight way that XFCE handles settings (read: it doesn’t save them, and doesn’t listen to ones that you do set, so don’t expect it to), most of KDE has leeched into my XFCE install.

This, along with a few other minor problems that I’ve been having lately, as well as a curiosity about what the install process would be like now that I know what I’m doing, have lead me to attempting a fresh install. Ideally, I’ll be back up and running within an hour.

Cheers, and wish me luck.

After the shitstorm that was Dana’s post about KDE, I figured I’d go into more details about how my day to day use is going.

Multiple Libraries Make Baby Jesus Cry
All the base system software in the Gentoo kdebase-meta package compiles against the QT4 libraries, but many of the optional packages still depend on QT3. Popular programs like KTorrent and AmaroK either still haven’t been updated or tagged in the Portage repository, so at any given time a desktop user will have programs running that use two separate graphical widget libraries. My level of use is such that I have programs running with GTK+, QT3 and QT4 on the same monitor – not to mention apps like Songbird that draw their own custom interface.

From an efficiency and system resource standpoint, this is really poor utilization. I have 4GB of RAM for intensive tasks such as music library organization, not to show slightly different scrollbars and window controls in every third application. Under GNOME 2.26, there was nowhere near this level of display potpourri with the default system utilities. (It also helps that Firefox is GTK+, which is close to the top-used app on my machine.)

Some Applications Just Suck
I’ve attempted to use all of the built-in KDE applications to combat the mismatched desktop effect, and often I’ll find them wanting compared to the GNOME or GTK+ equivalents. Dolphin seems like a very capable file manager, but it will lock up when hovering over some video thumbnails or seemingly randomly when in my home directory. (The rest of the system remains responsive, so it looks like Dolphin’s the culprit.) Konqueror is fast, but the configuration and settings are confusing to say the least – and without proper add-on/AdBlock Plus support, I can’t consider making it my primary browser.

Another example of application suck is ksnapshot, which is supposed to do what you think it would – take screen captures of active windows or the entire desktop. I made the unfortunate selection of selecting to capture a region, specifically the “Settings” menu in Konqueror. After selecting a nice 300×300 pixel area, pressing Enter to confirm the region did nothing. Escape did nothing, nor did any combination of mouse buttons. Since ksnapshot takes focus away from the entire desktop, it wasn’t possible to exit the application. I had to SSH in from another machine and manually kill the process to regain control.

Desktop Effects Are Nice
Once I’d mangled xorg.conf and set up my nVidia drivers in TwinView mode, I still ran into issues enabling the built-in KDE compositing effects. The command in Gentoo to learn is “eselect”, which when combined with “eselect opengl list” allows a display of all the possible OpenGL rendering engines. Apparently even when the nVidia drivers are enabled, one must specifically tell X to use the correct renderer.

The problem I’ve encountered is that while some effects are smooth as butter, such as moving Wobbly Windows, resizing them is delayed and causes display tearing. I have no idea what’s causing this, and the behaviour shouldn’t exist.

Going back to GNOME
As of tomorrow, I have no doubts that I’ll be returning to GNOME for regular desktop use. KDE has some compelling features but my experience with it has been less than ideal. I can’t afford to have my file browser lock up during regular use – and GNOME’s environment seems much more predictable.