Ubuntu 8.10, or Intrepid Ibex, has been announced and is due out October 2008.
Ubuntu follows a 6-months release cycle, and Intrepid Ibex was the name choosen to be the next release after Hardy Heron.
Hardy Heron itself is due to be released in April 2008, to replace Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). Note that Hardy Heron will be a Long Term Support release, meaning that it will be supported for at least 3 years. It also seems to be packing quite a lot of new features and mainly visual improvements. Do not miss out on this one if you like Ubuntu.
Intrepid Ibex will apparently put much emphasis on mobile computing, and as the Ubuntu developers put it, you must always be connected to the Internet, say when you move from your house to your office.
More information about Intrepid Ibex can be found here: Ubuntu Lists.
And for those who are wondering what an Ibex is, it's simply this:
Ps: Check out those horns! :|
Ohh.. I expect some flames on that title! Lolz! Defend your camp is you wish, whether Linux or Windows. And yeah, when I say Linux here, it mostly refers to Ubuntu and its derivatives, considered as one of the friendliest distros, and a pioneer in bringing Linux to new users.
1. Linux = FREE!
Absolutely right! And in all senses! Firstly, Linux is free. You don't pay a cent to get it. You just go to a distro's website or ftp, and leech it off there. Burn it on a CD or DVD, try it via LiveCD and after you are satisfied, you can install it, and send the LiveCD to your friends to convert them. Oh yeah, subsequent upgrades are free too! You get a complete OS, fully functional and many times (IMHO!!) better than Windows, and that without spending money. Isn't life generous? Another kind of freedom is that you are free do do whatever you want to Linux. Copy the disks, give to your friends, modify each and every part of it, take a look at the internal codings. In general, there's very little restriction placed on you.
Considering Windows, you will have to spend money to get each and every new version. You can't copy the disks and pass on to your friends. You cannot see the code. And you can hardly modify it to suit yourself. Is this what you want?
2. Linux is (relatively) safer
Quick! Name me 10 Linux viruses. "Uh..."? Right. Good answer. These things are rare. The last famous one, if I remember correctly, was Bliss. Even then, it couldn't propagate as easily as Windows viruses and had to be executed willfully by the user. Today, it is considered as a research curiosity. Since then, I've not heard of any major, chaos-causing ones.
Now. Another exercise! Name me 10 Windows viruses! "Easyyyy!" Yes! Nimda, ILoveYou, Blaster, Slammer, SoBig, MyDoom, Klez, Melissa, Stoned... and the list is very very long, and it gets longer everyday. This goes without considering the other kinds of malware floating around, that love Windows so much, and jump at the first occasion to infect your machine. You can get trojaned, wormed, keylogged, backdoored. All these terms mean one thing: you are in serious trouble once it hits you. Who would like to see his/her hard-drive completely wiped after installing something called YourFreeSoft.exe or similar. Ouch. That's about viruses. Some fun for you: List of Windows Virii vs List of Linux Virii
Now, in Windows, you often see people logged in as Administrator to perform their day-to-day tasks like browsing. This is serious liability, as all programs run can do admin-class things to your PC, like killing your files. Under Linux, you never login as admin. When you want to do something admin-like, you sudo it. “SuperUser Do it”. What happens is that you explicitly give admin privileges to your programs, so that they can't do weird stuff without you being aware.
No OS is totally safe. I don't say Linux is flawless and impenetrable. But considering the number of vulnerabilities in Windows (think WinME, MS denies its existence :D ), you are a lot safer in the Linux camp. You can even browse around the Internet unprotected, knowing that none of those .exe malware will ever hit you. That's a big part of the population. And even if the malware tries to find the registry or “system32”, they won't be able to find those! You could say your data is a lot safer when entrusted to Linux.
3. Linux is made by users, for users.
That's a definition of democracy, the OS way. When users develop things, they know exactly what other users might know. They are users themselves, and sometimes they look for certain features. If they cannot get these, they try to incorporate them into their software. I've searched for a transparent, auto-hiding and nice-looking launchbar for Windows like forever. After hours of searching, I found RunMe. The funny thing is, under Linux, that feature is already included!
Under Linux running GNOME, I created a panel, set its background color to transparent, set it to auto-hide and modified its size. That's it. I got myself an auto-hiding, transparent and cool-looking launchbar that matches my theme. What more could I ask of.
Another example? Windows networking. Whenever you are roaming, you will often need to change your IP address to match that of your home or office. It happens loads of time. I wanted a program that could keep "profiles" of my network settings, and apply them at the click of a button. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any free software that did this for Windows. Under Linux, KDE's network manager has that feature built-in. Useful!
And finally, yet another example for the unconvinced. Haven't you ever required to re-arrange your windows in your taskbar? Maybe switching between browser and wordprocessor, and you wanted those 2 windows to be side by side in the taskbar? Windows requires additional software to handle this. Linux handles it natively. Just click and drag the windows, and arrange them as you want.
Like this, there are many many useful features for you to discover, and you will probably say “why can't Windows include that?”. That's because Windows employs developers to write software for users, whereas Linux “employs” users to write software for users.
4. Linux is not resource-demanding
That's a ~50MB distro's desktop - Damn Small Linux's desktop
Right. I agree that it does demands resources. But this depends on which distro you are using. Distros like Kubuntu or Sabayon indeed demand loads of resources for KDE and the effects they use. But have you ever used Puppy Linux? Damn Small Linux? Feather Linux? PCLinuxOS Mini? Or any of those Mini distros? No? Then do try. These things run with the bare-minimum resources. People often install those on an old PC at home and turn it into something useful. Linux allows you to revive an old machine, say around 300MHz. Forget games and all, but at least your old box will be able to handle word processing without lagging, and without fear of BSODs. You could, for example, turn an old computer into a sort of "download server" to handle your long downloads. This will allow you to cut on electricity bills (maybe), and extend the lifetime of your "new" PC while the old one handles the long uptimes, and without fearing the risk of catching something nasty online. And hey! You are running a full OS, up-to-date on an age-old machine. Be proud!
5. But Vista has coooolll effects!!
Then my friend, you have not seen Compiz Fusion in action. Just watch the video below, and if your jaw doesn't hit the floor, then I dunno what would surprise you... Compiz Fusion's effects are simply amazing. The effects are not just for eye-candy. There are actually some use to them. One simple example that I often use myself is the transparency. When I need to refer to one window, and type in another, I put the typing one as "always on top" and make it semi-transparent. Then place my reference window just below. Then, I can "see through" my typing window, without the need to constantly switch between windows.
Alright, wobbly windows and flaming windows when closed may not be totally useful, but at least it's cool and can help turn your friends to Linux. The Cube is useful to quickly see what's all around your desktops. Yes. DESKTOPS! Linux supports virtual desktops natively.
If you still cannot cope with the mouse flaming trails, you can still turn off the effects you don't want. But rain falling on my desktop.. Looks peaceful! :P
That's part #1 if this article. I decided to split it up cuz it was just too long. Part #2 will be for another occasion. After I complete it, it'll be here.. But first, Intrepid Ibex requires my attention :D
Additional reading:
We can say that Vista is just out of the box (or maybe not, there's even a how-to about opening the Vista box), but anyways, many people now want an alternative to Windows. This alternative is called Linux. Some others went to Mac and its Leopard. Enthusiasts choose BSD or some other flavor of Open-source OS. I chose Linux. I dunno why. I haven't tried BSD yet. (Selven keeps convincing me. I gotta submit one of these days and give it a try). I am therefore writing this post for people who want to move from Windows to Linux. It covers what they should expect, and what is expected out of them.
It can't be stressed enough, but still new users keep making the mistake of comparing Linux to Windows. Come'on folks. We are speaking of two different worlds here. One is like Pokemon, cute and fluffy, while the other is like 300, harsh and cold. Windows is about pointing and clicking. Linux is about typing. In Windows, you are usually accustomed to having a GUI for nearly every task you can think of. Linux doesn't offer a GUI everytime. For some tasks, you will need to get dirty and use command line. And no. It's not weird. It's not ugly. While new users love the GUI, a Linux power-user will vouch for the CLI. I use both, using the GUI where I can, and if it's not available, I use CLI.
When you first move to Linux, don't complain that you have to type commands, and that commands were used in prehistoric ages of computing. That's plain bad attitude, and I had that attitude too when I begun. Now, I'm a bit more comfortable in Linux, I stopped complaining and saw the numerous advantages of CLI. One simple example? Using a SINGLE line of command, you can backup your whole Linux system. With another command, you can remove EVERY file that is on the Linux file-system. What's those commands? I leave it for you to learn.
Stop complaining and accept the differences. Only then you will be able to progress in the Linux world.
2) Choose an appropriate Distro
Linux comes in many many many many flavors, each with its own spices and ingredients. The trick is to go Distro-shopping until you find one that suits you. How do you do that? Try going over to Distrowatch, and try out the Top #10 distros, and pick one that you like. A good place to start is Ubuntu which is often thought as the most user-friendly distro, or maybe PCLinuxOS that recently stole the crown of Ubuntu in Distrowatch. You could also try one of the mini-distros like Damn-Small-Linux or Puppy Linux just to test. After you find one that you like on Live CD, give it an install and try using it to its full potential. Be careful of how you install though, you could wreck an existing install (maybe Windows), but it's kind of rare. My recommended distros: Ubuntu or its variants (Xubuntu/Kubuntu), Sabayon Linux (if you want eye-candy), PCLinuxOS (if you want a near-complete system out-of-the-box) and Puppy Linux (if you want a portable Linux install). I am currently using Linux Mint, and here I reviewed it.
3) In simple terms, "Google is your friend"
And how true this is! While using Linux, you will encounter several issues. Your devices may not be recognized. You want to change a setting, but don't know how to do it. You want to install something, but can't figure it out. Had it been Windows, you could have phoned Tech Support. This is not the case with most Linux distros. Only a little minority of them offer live tech-support, and the rest leave you on your own. So how do you get help?
Here comes the tagline "Google is your friend". Use it! Google your problem and I am sure you will find solution. Google something like "install open office linux" and see the number of results you get. If Google doesn't point you to anything, try going over to your Distro's forum and ask there. Ubuntu forums is like a vault full of help and tips! If that doesn't work, get an IRC client and connect to their channel and seek help. If that still doesn't help, consult your friends who have working knowledge in Linux. Still no help? Try the "man" -manual-command in Console/Terminal. If all those fail, I dunno what you are trying to do. Maybe have Linux make coffee for you and do your laundry?
And when you do receive help, be polite and thank the helpers. If you can't get help, don't go on a ranting spree, and complain about lack of help and whatever. Always remember that Linux is free software. Most of the time, people do not get paid to develop it. They do it out of their own time, for pleasure or otherwise. By ranting, you are not doing justice to these people's efforts. Instead, be grateful for what you have, and try to help them create what is not already available. How? Donate, code or even beta-test software. Maybe you could provide information? But don't just complain. And if you still can't resist, then maybe Linux is not for you. Use Windows where you can get all the support you need. See pt.5
4) Not everything works under Linux
Upon your first boot, your Wireless connection might not work. You may have weird screen-resolution problems with your blazing new graphics card. Your webcam will almost certainly not work. These are common driver issues, issues which you do not have on Windows. This is a major outcry coming from new users: "My device XYZ refuses to work in Linux. Linux sux! *rant* *rant*!!"
Get this right now. Manufacturers provide drivers for Windows. Not all manufacturers provide drivers for Linux. So, if your device works, be grateful and thank the volunteer(s) that wrote that driver. Almost surely, that volunteer did not get any remuneration for his/her software, while manufacturers pay their developers to write drivers.
If one of your hardware doesn't work, either make do without it, or try looking online for a solution. Maybe somebody got a guide or solution for you. If nothing is available, don't complain. Make do without your hardware, or mail the manufacturer asking for Linux drivers. Or code your own, if you got coding skills. You can also pray that the next version of your distro supports the hardware. Most do after a version change-over.
What you can do? Try posting in your distro's forum. Describe the hardware, what the issue is, and what you want. Provide as much detail as possible. It might help a developer develop a driver one day, who knows.. :P
Weird point... Right. If after giving Linux a genuine chance and attempted to use it to the best of your efforts, you still cannot use it, then go back to Windows. Or try other distros. Maybe you will get lucky with other flavours? Try BSD or other variants. If nothing works, Windows is here.
Nobody forces you to use Linux. You chose to move to a new OS, a free OS (cost and copyright). You have nothing to lose, right? If you get something for free, you cannot complain that it doesn't work, or that it has flaws. You got it for free, you either use it or scrap it. Depends on you. But please, don't criticize it uselessly.
Well, this was my thoughts on moving to Linux. Maybe it will help new users make a choice. Maybe it will get buried somewhere in the vastness of the Internet, never to be read. But anyways, if you have read it, then I thank you! As always, comments appreciated. :)
Oh yes!! People usually know me as a Linux fan that likes the freedom of open-source, and the customization abilities of Linux. But as Faris says, "there comes a time in the life of every man [insert comment here]". My comment is "to rant about Linux".
For this two, I'll rant about two favourites, namely Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (the KDE flavor of Ubuntu) and PCLinuxOS 2007.
Ok.. so I got myself a fresh copy of Kubuntu Gutsy. It's so flaming new that I could see the gloss while downloading the ISO. Ok.. it was just the Vista effects. Anyways, I was going to test it on my Vaio Laptop, which is quite recent. After burning the ISO and all the blablas I was into Kubuntu.
At first sight, nothing had changed. KDE was still fat and heavy, and the wallpaper is still blue. The menu had changed in simple ways, like the Find Files and Folders had been changed. And some other random stuff. I loved Feisty Fawn which unfortunately didn't work on my laptop due to that weird "Cannot access TTY: Job control turned off" error message. Gutsy booted fine, so I proceeded to install. That, as usual, was a breeze. Nothing bad till now. Now the evil awoke.
I rebooted into the installed system and started browsing around. I started by testing Dolphin, the new file browser. First thing that pops-up to my face.. "XYZ file in ABC path is not writable: Permission denied". I got like 5 of these at once. WTF? How can a path in my home directory not be writable? Anyways, I was still in a good mood, and decided to set [all] the permissions right. Took me some time to do these files individually. Ok.. Dolphin worked. Time to get my WLAN settings up.
NetworkManager said it detected WLan0, which is cool. Funny thing is, my LED indicator for WLAN on refused to light up on Linux. Strange.. Anyways, I proceeded to configure it with Static IP and the other settings. After iwlist scan and all, it still refused to work. Now, I was starting to get frustrated.
I got my laptop plugged in on cable, configured settings, leeched NDisWrapper off the repositories, and installed my windows driver for my WLAN. Tada! It worked! FOR ONCE ONLY! After a reboot, it decided not to work again. I had it correctly configured and all, loaded as module and whatnot. Hours of Ubuntu-forums searching yielded nothing new. I gave up on WLAN.
Now I wanted to send some files to my main PC. I got SAMBA and installed it for file sharing with windows. I configured it, share-level security and all. What happened? Darn thing asks me for a Login/PWord combination. I gave for root then for myself. Nothing worked. XP couldn't access Kubuntu. I tried to self-connect from Kubuntu. Same thing. Login/PW, nothing got accepted. That was weird. I reviewed smb.conf, and all. It seemed to be in order. Testparm said nothing. Duh. I even copied off a guy's smb.conf and amended it. Nothing could make SAMBA not ask for a Login/PW. Now I got pissed off. I logged off and decided to go try another distro.
PCLinuxOS it was. Again, DL the ISO, burn, boot, but no install. I got pissed off at the beginning itself. My display driver for Intel GMA 965 was not supported. I was stuck at 1024x768 instead of 1280x800. Duh.. PCLinuxOS seemed to have many good things to use.. like pre-installed Firefox and codecs. It played MP3s and most movies out-of-the-box. But 1024 is just too much of a pain to use on widescreen.
And so, after my epic journey through Linux, I was safely back to my comfort zone called Vista. Poor me. That was a tough night.
What I meant to say is.. Linux is still not ready to be a normal-user's Desktop OS. One simple example would be the Dolphin permissions crisis. When I open My Computer, I don't get errors like "Permission Denied" on first use. Vista recognized my WLAN on first run. Same for my Display. Ok, these are driver-related issues, and Linux cannot be blamed. Manufacturers should. But still, it makes Linux a tedious experience. Mind you, I won't back down from using my Fav OS. But it can make life tough when it wants, particularly when you want to have things "simply work". Like.. why the hell does Samba keep asking for a damn password? I said don't ask, so DON'T! These kinds of things are what keep Linux from being adopted as a friendly OS.
Much progress has been made since the times of CLIs, I can't deny that. But there is still way to go for Linux to be able to claim to be as user-friendly as Windows. Maybe in 5 years. For now, it remains a geek's toy.
I await your flames and comment. Go wild but NO SPAM! :)
Oh yes!! Seems today is the day of the OH YES's!! :P
Anyways, after almost a day of downloading Xubuntu (~500MB but slowness kept me waiting), I ran it in Live-CD mode on my laptop, a Sony Vaio FZ-240. What happened? IT WORKED!
With Kubuntu Fiesty Fawn, I couldn't boot it without applying a set of commands. I was getting dropped into Busybox with this error message
"Cannot access TTY. Job control turned off.", together with some bla bla's.
After reading around, I guessed that Fiesty was not able to handle my hardware. I waited and tried different distros. Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and Knoppix worked charmingly. I didn't particularly like any of them. I'm a *Ubuntu fan, so I wanted some variant to use.
For some folks, the older Dapper Drake worked. That failed for me. I kept waiting, begging Bobster and Neelesh for the Gutsy Gibbon CD of Kubuntu. They forgot me and left me in my torment. :( (Bad things happen when you deprive me of Linux. I get weird.)
But now! BUT NOW! I got Xubuntu. And I just can't describe the feeling I got when I saw XFCE in front of me. And this thing runs sooooooo smoothly on Core 2 Duo! Even my resolution was supported out of the box. Now, what remains is my WiFi driver that's not working. Will fix that soon enough, either with iwlwifi, or via Ndiswrapper if it fails. I'll start posting my Xubuntu experiences soon enough. That, until I get Kubuntu from one of my tormentors or if my ship-it arrives!
Yes I know. Minimalistic desktop. No bangs and frills. Just cleanliness. Amazes me too, who is used to the bulkiness of KDE. Anyways, you'll get my feedbacks soon.
I initially downloaded Xubuntu to run on an old Intel Celeron 600MHz PC I have at home. It has 128MB of RAM, and 16MB VRAM, with a 15GB HD. I will try it on that, and post my reviews as to whether Xubuntu can really revive old PCs. I tried Damn Small Linux (DSL) and Puppy Linux on it. It worked, but it lacked features. I'll be posting my review of DSL and Puppy afterwards. Puppy failed to boot. Xorg has issues apparently. No luck with XVesa too.
For now, I return to my revision. Why do geeks need test weeks? Life's sooo unfair! I'd kill to have full-days spent on my pcs! :(
I've been playing with my new Feisty quite a lot lately. After finally coaxing Samba into working, I wanted another challenge. Here I must say, I had to admit defeat. And guess what? I can now get to make some complaints about Linux.
The 2 things I wanted to do is:
1) Installed a new screensaver obtained from kde-look.org
2) Make my NetGear WG111T USB WIFI adaptor work on Linux.
For both of these, I was unable to succeed. Now, one by one.
1) Screensaver crisis:
I know the screensavers that come with KDE are extremely cool when compared to those shipped with Windows. But while browsing KDE-look, I found a screensaver which I really wanted. I immediately downloaded the Tar source and thought I could compile it and get it to work. Guess what? I was wrong. Now, ranting time starts.
Who the hell wants to compile a screensaver? We just want to paste a file in a folder and get that thing to work! No sir, we don't want to compile things just to get a new screensaver. The thing is: You have to compile! WTF!
Ok, I can tolerate this bit. The instructions were quite simple. Extract the Tar.gz contents somewere, go to that directory in Konsole. Then:
./configure
make
make install
Those were the 3 things to do. Quite simple it seems! NOPE! It's not! In comes Dependency Hell!
While configuring, I was missing a number of libraries and had to download loads of packages. I also had to use prefixes to point to the correct directory. From here, it seems simple, but trust me it isn't. You are going to hate it! It's waaaayyyy too complicated! The length of the commands and the number of error messages produced creates genuine fear and cold sweat... 100's lines of errors! :S WTFFFF!
After lots and lots of efforts, Googling and package downloading, I could get past the ./configure step. Now, when I tried make. Again loads of errors concerning unreferenced things in openGL. I didn't quite get what the errors were about, but I want to proceed. I was tired enough with getting configure to work. Forget me now! There is no way I'm going through another dependency hell to allow make to work. And that just for a darned screensaver!
Sorry people, but here, Windows rulz. Just download a Setup, install and your screensaver is in your Control Panel. But Linux? Download source, compile screensaver, get packages, solve dependency issues and whatnot?? Sorryyy! Never again! Very very non user-friendly!
2) WiFi USB Adaptor
I abandoned the screensaver, deleting the source and extracted files to remove the temptation to try again. Now I wanted to get my adaptor to work. I Googled around and heard there was no workable driver. You had to use the Windows driver with NDisWrapper and get it to work on Linux.
Considering the amount of work needed to get that to work, I haven't even tried. But I heard that it works pretty well, if you can accept that every time you want your connection, you need to use Konsole...
Anyways, here it's not really the fault of Linux but that of NetGear that refuses to provide a driver for Linux users. I prefer to wait for a better solution to make the adaptor work. Till that, I prefer to use Windows to connect wirelessly. Hope somebody develops a good driver. I really like using Linux, but I'm still a noob. Don't count on me to go write drivers or to use NDisWrapper or whatever. I just want to leech of some packages and get things to work. The NDisWrapper and driver writing will be when I become a novice. Perhaps in a few years! :P
At last! I finally got the last of Samba, finally getting it to work with itself (!) and WinXP. It was not an easy task, and after much Googling, I was able to find the solution. After all, Google is god! :D
Here's the scenario:
i had installed Feisty Fawn Kubuntu on my laptop, replacing Dapper. Samba was working well with Dapper, and I can't really say what I did to make it work... so after upgrade, Samba again refused to work like it should. Or perhaps, I didn't know what to do exactly.
Anyways, I wanted a simple way to share files, without users having to enter usernames and passwords. Everybody could access my Shares, since I had a small network and required minimal security.
After the Feisty install (or reinstall, since I managed to kill KDE pretty badly by switching on translucency and stuff, things which my antique graphics card did not support), I downloaded Samba, Samba-common, Smbfs and Smbclient from Adept. It went smoothly.
After that, I had to configure Samba. My workgroup is MSHOME. Therefore, I went to KControl (K-menu -> Run -> kdesu kcontrol) and accessed Samba under Internet and Network. I configured Share Level security since that is what I wanted (no usernames/passwords). Furthurmore, I configured the workgroup and the name of my pc. I defined which folder to share and who had access to it. I also granted Read/Write permission on that folder. Yosh! All done. Now to try.
I opened run and typed the \\ and the IP address of my Desktop PC. Konqueror opened and showed me the shares on Desktop PC after a few seconds. Yes. I could access the shares on my Desktop. R/W worked ok. All done here.
Now, I repeated the run, \\ and localhost (\\localhost). Again, Konqueror opened and showed my local shared folder under Kubuntu. However, things got weird when I accessed that Linux share.
As I told you, I could use Kubuntu to access shares on other machines with RW permission. But when I tried to access the Linux share locally via localhost, I got this error: "The file or folder smb://localhost/Shares does not exist". WTF! I saw the folder. I can open it via Konqueror. How come it doesn't exist?
After intense hours of Googling, I found this very very interesting site. It described about the problem I was having and proposed a solution.
Just go to KControl -> Internet and Network -> Samba -> Advanced Tab -> VFS and disable Host Msdfs. Also, check your smb.conf, usually in /etc/smb.conf for any lines saying "host msdfs = yes" and set those to no, or delete them. And ensure that the folders you are sharing are Public, Browsable and Writable. These are settable in KControl -> Internet and Network -> File Sharing. And check that Share Level Security is enabled in KControl - - -> Samba.
Site: http://niftiestsoftware.com/?p=24
I immediately followed its instructions and guess what? Samba worked to perfection for me! I could access the share locally, and other PCs could access my shares. Everything worked like it should! Wowwwww! That's what I'd called the Taming of Samba! :P Hope this article helps you tame your Samba.
P.s. I'm no Linux expert, but I just wanted to share my experience with you folks.
My pal (Robby/Bobby) got his laptop with Vista on it, and we were checking out the User Interface (UI). The 3d desktop is amazing, allowing you (with ALT+TAB) to view the contents of several windows at the same time.
This is just one of the features of the new Aero interface that still eats around 512MB RAM. Other features include a mini-preview when you pause your cursor on a taskbar item, allowing you to view the contents of the window. I was certainly amazed by the new Aero. The problem is that the people at MSoft noobified the panels a bit, sometimes so much that they are totally different from XP at first sight. One example would be the Manage Network Connections, which allows you to see which connections you have on your computer... (In XP, Start -> Control Panel -> Network connections). It's really, really different.. Most of the stuff in Vista is like that!
Now, while browsing I saw a video of the Beryl interface which runs on Linux. And there is just one thing to say...
P.s. See the end of the video too! Courtesy of MSoft... :D
And another Beryl video for your enjoyment. Couldn't find interesting Aero's, but this one is really nice!
I was successful in configuring Samba with the IPs and workgroup through smb.conf, usernames and passwords, and configured the shares and privileges using:
smbpasswd -a {username}
then I was prompted with creating a password and it went fine.
My WinXP box was able to see the Linux box and access its shares after putting in the username and password created through smbpasswd. Everything was fine up till here.
Now, when I tried to make the Linux box access the WinXP box, things went bad. I used konqueror and tried "smb://{IP of WinXP box}
Privileges problem I thought. I set the share privileges on WinXP to Everyone, that is, everyone is allowed to access and modify that share. I ensured that everything was well set manually, and set the group privileges. As far as I know, the privileges were ok. I retried connecting. No result. I disabled firewall and tried again. No result.
Note that smbclient from konsole was able to list the shares without password, but I wasn't able to access them. Again I was prompted with username and password, but everything I tried failed.
What the hell is that username and password prompt? What am I supposed to input? WinXP username and pass failed. Linux username and pass failed. New user on XP failed. New user on Linux failed. Linux user and WinXP pass failed. Vice versa failed! Now what do I do???
That's just as far as I have progressed. If it works, I'll post something... Till then, I'll be dancing samba trying to figure out how to get Samba to work.
Anyways, it's true. I crashed my KDE. Don't ask me how, I don't know. I was quietly (ok not so quietly, feverishly perhaps) trying to configure Samba to allow sharing with my WinXP box, with lots of kdesu's and sudo's, but finally, everything went kaboom and Kcmshell crashed. I restarted the session, no result. Restarted the laptop, no result. Kcmshell, at least the kdenetwork-filesharing module was dead. Now what? I had to reinstall Kubuntu, and lose my 1/2 day of modem driver installation! OMG! Damn it! But there wasn't any other solution, as far as I knew... Also, I was successful in setting up Internet Sharing between Kubuntu and WinXP. It was quite easy, just setting up gateways and configuring the static IPs, nothing great. I was about to lose that too... Too bad.
So I proceeded with the reinstall. Sent Kubuntu to the CD-Drive, changed the boot sequence and next, I was into LiveCD mode. I reinstalled the whole thing, and formatted my existing EXT3 and SWAP partitions. Hopefully, the config* I used allowed me to preserve my files on WinXP and my Files partition. Remember, I had dual-booted WinXP SP2 and Kubuntu on laptop.
The reinstall was fast (15 mins) and the desktop was back. Now, something great happened. I don't know how, but it seems Kubuntu had already configured my NIC via DHCP, granting it an IP and had already set my gateway and workgroup settings! Now that was really fantastic!
Now, I just had to reinstall my modem driver. The idea of using Internet Sharing didn't occur to me when I first installed the driver manually. Now, since Kubuntu had already configured Internet Sharing for me, I could just Adept the essential files, namely Build-Essential and Linux-Headers-
Anyways, Kubuntu is real great in the sense that it configured everything from the moment it saw that my laptop NIC was connected to my pc! Fortunately for me, I hadn't disconnected the LAN cable during installation!
Apparently, it used DCHP, although I didn't use it on my PC. I don't know how it managed to configure the IP of the laptop without a DCHP server. It did it alone? Perhaps...
And yeah, when it configured Internet Sharing automatically, there was a problem with DNS, or name resolution. I could ping IPs but not hostnames. I just had to edit my resolv.conf file and put "nameserver 202.123.2.6" in there. 202.123.2.6 is the DNS Server of my ISP, which I obtained via an ipconfig -all in WinXP. Everything worked fine after that... Nice nice!
More about my experiences with Kubuntu to come... If I have time!
*File Systems Config (Size Approx.):
--> WinXP = NTFS = 20GB
--> Files = FAT32 = 50GB
--> Kubuntu = EXT3 = 7GB
--> SWAP = 1GB
--> Total = 80GB
Well, the situation cropped up since I have an USB ADSL modem. I know, I should be using an ethernet modem! But I have to do with what I have at hand! And I took it as a challenge... That I'd setup my modem like a big boy, without assistance! DAMN! That was the worst thing I ever tried! Manual Install!
I went to Ubuntu's wiki to know how to install an USB ADSL modem. I've got a Sagem F@st 800 and (fortunately) the instructions were there. Mind you, I spent one whole day trying to get this thing to work! And I kinda went wrong some times... na MANY times!
The process started with getting the essential driver files, an Eagle-USB package. Simple enough. Now, there were 7-8 versions, and since I'm lazy I took the one with the smallest file size (grave mistake #1!). It didn't work. Why? Because I had to compile the driver.
Here comes the worst part: Dependencies Hell. Linux manual install is not something I'd wish to my worst enemy. I needed the build-essential and linux-headers packages from "http://packages.ubuntu.com" . I downloaded them and installed them (right-click - Kubuntu package - Install). Immediately, I got "Dependencies Missing" errors. Then I saw something... that those packages had Dependencies, and worst of all, that these dependencies had...dependencies which had dependencies which had dependencies!!! NESTED DEPENDENCIES! OMG! I downloaded and downloaded! Finally, I had like 30 dependencies files on my hands! I sent all to my USB Pendrive (which Kubuntu recognizes on plugin, great!). I started installing the first package dependency, a .deb package. It said I had not installed another dependency. They chained and chained!
This was really hell! In fact, several times, I had to use my main pc to go on Internet, fetch additional dependencies, send to Pendrive then copy to Laptop!
"Dependencies not found", "XYZ not installed", "ABC not configured", "LMN could not be found" were common errors. And after lots of experimentation, and I really mean LOTS of experimentation, I finally got the build-essential and linux-headers to install!
I moved on to compiling my driver. It didn't work since I had misread (grave mistake #2) the instructions and got the wrong package and I was doing the instructions for Edgy Eft while I had Dapper Drake (grave mistake #3) I had to go back, download the correct package, send to Pendrive, copy to laptop and try again. Tiring... And that doesn't include setting permissions on the folders required to extract the Tarball contents for the driver. Chmod through konsole etc etc then re-chmod to set the permissions back to default! Phewww!
Finally, I found "https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsbAdslModem/EagleUsb" and followed the instructions strictly, uninstalling everything I had installed and reversing all changes (and in the process, uninstalling build-essentials! More Dependencies Hell - grave mistake #4).
After lots of fiddling, I was able to get the modem up and running. And I was able to connect to the internet... YAAAAYYY! And I had done a manual install all by myself, at least for the dependencies. I'm not gonna do that again anytime soon! NO WAY! Now I shall adept! I hope...
I tested browsing with Konqueror and chatted a bit with Kopete. Both worked fine. And a ping to google returned positive results. So everything was working fine. Just that... to start the connection: Open console, then sudo startadsl. This is kinda... difficult... considering the double-click I used to do on Windows...
Conclusion: Read the instructions damn well! That's all there was to it! And don't be lazy!
P.s. I'd highly recommend these links to people who have Sagem F@st 800:
-https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsbAdslModem/EagleUsb
-http://packages.ubuntu.com/
However, try at your own risk! I do not take responsability for what you do after you read this post, and any consequences of your actions! :P
So, after long chats with Sundeep a.k.a Dea-|-h, I decided to give Linux a try. He recommended that I start with Kubuntu on Live CD. I downloaded the 700MBs of Kubuntu, burned the ISO to a CD, and booted from it on my laptop. At first, it looks a bit geeky with lots of commands popping up, but after KDE appears, it's magnificent! The Desktop looks so clean and the menu so practicable. However, after some experimentation, I found that I could not access my NTFS partition on which WinXP resided. That kinda annoyed me. After some research on the net, I found that support for NTFS in Linux is still experimental, and that it could safely be read but not written to.
I refered to other sources and friends, and they did not seem to have this problem. Zlug recommended that I install Kubuntu to my hard-disk on my main pc and that it would be a lot better. However, I could not do it immediately since I had important files and didn't want to format.
Then? By some miracle bad luck, the hard-disk on the Laptop failed. I sent it for repairs (since I don't have access to laptop parts and am no laptop technician). It came back with a single 80GB NTFS partition with WinXP SP2 on that. Again, I could not format since I didn't have the SP2 update package at hand. Then I remembered that there are programs that can resize partitions! A quick google search returned quite a few, including Ranish Partition Manager. Another great program is Paragon Partition Manager that supports lots of File Systems, but unfortunately, it's not free. It's great anyways. So I stuck with Ranish. I booted from floppy (yea, call me archaic). I selected the NTFS partition and set the new sizes and it did the rest.
In the end, I came up with 16GB NTFS, 55GB FAT32, and around 10GB of RAW space. Why such a configuration? WinXP SP2 was left intact on the 16GB. I got 55GB of free space to be shared by both Linux and Windows (since NTFS is risky, I prefered FAT32). And got some RAW space to setup Linux. I was ready to go.
I booted on the Live CD and ran the installer. It was easy and well-guided. I had to manually edit the partition table.
Here I did a grave mistake. On the 10GB I formatted it to EXT3. After I proceeded, the Kubuntu Installer notified me that I did not set the Swap File partition. WTF? I returned and checked. Indeed, there was no Swap File in the step where I get to set mount points! :s
Then, I found that I had to create a Primary partition of around 9GB, and an Extended partition of around 1GB for the Swap File from the 10GB of RAW space! I formatted the 9GB with EXT3 and the 1GB with "Linux-Swap"! Here's how you determine Swap partition! Quite weird! How to create partitions? Manually edit the partition table, right-click an empty space on the schema given and select create. Set your sizes and File System and you are off. Simple. But the Linux-Swap was really well hidden! So it's worth paying attention here.
After that, things went smoothly and soon enough, I had a beautiful Kubuntu running on my Laptop, along with my WinXP SP2 untouched! :P
More to come soon...
