The Linux Experiment

This blog post is about my experiences. If you hit this page from a search engine looking to fix this issue click here to skip to the solution.

Recently, I’ve been reorganizing my computers based on their usage. My old HTPC, has resumed its duties as my primary desktop/server, my Mac Mini has been attached to the my desktop through Synergy, my server was given to my brother for personal use, and his old computer – a nettop – is now being used as our new HTPC.

After a painful decision making process – a topic for another time, and another post – I decided that this nettop, named Apollo after the Greek god of many things including “music, poetry, and the arts” [as close as I could get to entertainment],  should run Ubuntu 10.4 with XBMC as the media center app. After testing it’s media playback capabilities from a local file, I was rather impressed. I set out to add a SMB share from within XBMC, and was prompted to add a username and password.

I wasn’t really expecting this, because Leviathan – my desktop/sever running Windows 7 – has public sharing turned on, as well as a guest account. I entered in my credentials, and was asked yet again for a username and password. After trying multiple times, I decided to quit XBMC and see if I could get Ubuntu to connect to the share. Here too, I was prompted for a username and password, again and again.

Next I headed to the terminal to run smbclient. This didn’t work either, as I was shown a message saying smbclient failed with “SUCCESS – 0″. I guess success shouldn’t be zero, so my next move was to attempt mounting the network share using CIFS. Again, I was met with repeated defeat.

Begrudgingly I took to the internet with my problem, only to find that there were many people unable to connect to their Windows 7 from Ubuntu. The suggestions ranged from registry hacks to group policy administration, none of which worked. One repeated suggestion however, was to un-install the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant. However, as a user of the Windows Live Essentials (Wave 4) Beta that was recently released – I had no such program. I did however have a similar application called the Windows Live Messenger Companion, which I chose to uninstall – again, to no avail.

However, I soon reasoned that perhaps whatever was blocking people using the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant was now being used within the actual Windows Live Messenger client or the other Windows Live Essentials apps that I’d recently installed. I started by uninstalling everything but Windows Live Messenger – because I really, really like the beta version. Alas, this did not help. Next I uninstalled the actual Windows Live Messenger client and voila – I was able to connect with no prompting for passwords at all. Because that makes -any- sense.

As a matter of interest, I installed the regular WLM non-beta client and made sure that the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant was installed, and tried to connect again. Not surprisingly, I was no longer able to connect to my Windows 7 shares. After un-installing the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant my shares were back up and I was mostly happy. Except that I couldn’t use the new Windows Live Messenger beta.

I can’t be sure if the other tinkering I did also helped clear up my problems, but as a recap here are the steps I recommend to access your Windows 7 shares from Ubuntu:

1) If you have the Windows Live Essentials (Wave 4) beta installed, you’ll have to uninstall all of the applications that come with this. For now, you can install the current version of Windows Live Messenger and the other Windows Live Essentials.

2) If you have Windows Live Messenger installed, or ANY of the Windows Live Essentials programs installed check to see if you have the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant installed. If so, uninstall it.

3) Hopefully, now you can enjoy your Windows 7 shares in Ubuntu

Important Note:

Beta software has this nasty habit of leaving beta status sooner or later. If this issue is not resolved when the newest version of Windows Live Messenger is officially released, you may not be able to use the Window Live Messenger client if you need your Windows 7 shares from Ubuntu. I would suggest using an application like Pidgin as your instant messenger, as it can also connect to the Windows Live Messenger service. Other options include Digsby, Miranda, and Trillian.

Originally posted on my personal website here.

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…

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!