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apt-get install ubuntu

Wednesday, 11 August 2010 15:08 Matt O

I'm not quite ready to ditch Win7 (but I'd like to!) on my main computer yet, but I've been having really good luck with Ubuntu, both as the only installation on my laptop and as a VM on my workstation.  I've had to work with the virtualization more and more recently due to some website testing, and I just leave it up a lot otherwise because I like seeing it over there.

I'm using Ubunto 10.04, and I love Gnome, I love apt-get installing things (SO EASY!) and I love the built-in feel that this version has with a lot of the base installs.  Chat app?  Built in.  Standard, useful desktop stuff installed?  Absolutely.  And having a desktop within a desktop is especially weird - when I use the Desktop Cube effect from Compiz in the VM it almost blows my mind.

I'm using AWN as a dock, which I like a lot, but it does come with a simple problem or two - I don't know where to find icons for installed programs that I want to put in my dock.  I'm told I really should try Docky, but what it'll do that AWN doesn't is a mystery.  Maybe when I run up against a shortfall in AWN I'll try it.

And I'm definitely using only Ubuntu on whatever my "real" laptop becomes this fall - it'll be time to get something then (a t410s, maybe?), and Ubuntu will be the only OS on there for sure.

That's it for the geeky linux love for now.

 

Palm Pre woes

Wednesday, 09 June 2010 09:11 Matt O

Palm PreJust performed an applications reset on my Pre because there was some weird issue where there was a blank application that was keeping my phone from updating some of the programs that needed upgrading.  Doing a reset where I deleted and re-installed the applications on the Pre (and restarted twice) seemed to solve the problem, at least for the time being.  I've read that the problem came back for some poor schmuck, but at the moment, it seems solved on my part.

I've been thinking about phones because I'd really like to have a phone abroad, and I think I saved my carte-orange from Paris, so I could use that there.  We'll see.  Maybe an unlocked phone from craigslist is the way to go.  I dunno.  Unlocked phones sort of confuse me - can't I just pop a new SIM into an AT&T phone or whatever?

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 09 June 2010 09:19 )
 

tablets

Wednesday, 13 January 2010 10:46 Matt O

So the Apple tablet has everyone's knickers in a twist.  Apple is going to blow up your expectations of what a slab of silicon and a plastic screen can do.  They're going to sell you rainbows and angels' wings in a oversimplified white box and everyone is going to pee on themselves about how awesome it's going to be.  And it'd better be awesome.

Here's why.

After Apple releases the tablet, that'll be it.  The same week that the iphone came out, everything in the cell phone industry ground to a halt and here we are, twenty years later (in tech time, anyway), with no innovation beyond the addition of wifi, eventually.  So Apple defined the new generation of phones, and here we are, waiting for them to define the budding generation of tablet PCs.  And it's not going to be awesome.

If you hung out with me during a very specific point during the late spring of 2007, you heard one of my rants on what I wanted from a tablet, so you should probably stop reading this now.  In fact, I'm going to put the rest of this rant below the break so that you don't even see it if you don't want.

 

Last Updated ( Friday, 15 January 2010 18:59 ) Read more...
 

RAID 5 issues

Sunday, 13 December 2009 11:05 Matt O

I have an Asus M3A79-T Deluxe motherboard on which I'm using RAID 5.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Well, it ain't.

The fucker breaks RAID almost as soon as I fix it.  The first time it happened, I didn't think much of it because I rarely restart my computer, because I couldn't see a non-functioning drive in Windows and because I wasn't getting any other sorts of errors, so it was no big deal. Eventually, I changed my mind and tried to fix it.  Eventually, I fixed it.  Shortly, it was broken again.  Both times, it's drive2 that's "critical" and the BIOS-based editor is totally friggin useless.

So this morning, since the Eagles aren't on till later, I decided to fix it again.  I'd done it once, right?  The problem is that I have no idea now how I fixed it then.  I remember pain.  So I search and I search.  There's some Intel program (doesn't work with AMD Phenom chips - fuck), there's some nVidia program (doesn't work with anything but low-level integrated nVidia chipsets - what?  And who trusts a video card company with their disk management anyway?), and then I found RAIDXpert.  That's a download link, in case you care - it was a pain in the ass to find.  RAIDXpert is some browser based thing that seems to be working on my array right now as I type.  I just logged in (logged in? You'll need admin/admin as the username and password to log into the browser-based program that points to Localhost, FYI), mucked around, and eventually started rebuilding the array.  it's at 15%.

I'm going to go away and come back, just to see what happens.  I have a laptop with Ubuntu to fix anyway.

It seemed to have worked, so I'll restart and then update to let you know.

And it seems to have worked. The BIOS is reporting a RAID5 array in perfect working order and there were no issues with windows or my data.  So it's RAIDXpert FTW.

Last Updated ( Sunday, 13 December 2009 13:30 )
 

Don't forget the Media Server!

Thursday, 10 December 2009 06:57 Matt O

It's the holiday season and you should be listening to Christmas music at work.  The best way to do that is to go to http://media.clapboard.org and navigate to the Christmas folder.  I have modern Christmas crap, classic Christmas crap, mashup Christmas crap... you name it!

That's all.  For now.

update: I've done a complete backup of the server so i'm safe while I'm away, and I've updated the server software to run the newest and best code.  Now listing out 88GB of music spread over 17,000 songs takes as little time as it can (even though it's still not super fast).  Let me know if you somehow don't have an account but want one.

Last Updated ( Friday, 11 December 2009 15:22 )
 
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