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Friday WA time was when I was able to download the latest Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx), I then decided to perform an upgrade of my existing 9.10 (Karmic Koala) rather than a clean install – that was a big mistake.

Apart from taking over 3 hours to perform, once it was complete I found that my desktop effects wouldn’t work – Lucid had broken the ATI/fglrx graphics drivers, and it wasn’t possible to uninstall all components in order to re-install and fix the problem (major bug there). And on Ubuntu’s forums I wasn’t the only one having that problem. After a day of stuffing around, I had it fixed … sort of.

But it wasn’t good enough, so I bought a new WD 500 GB ‘black’ hard drive, replaced the 640 GB (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) drive, and performed a clean install of 10.04 which it only took about half an hour – next was installing my usual applications and then migrating my data across to the new OS. Once done everything worked as it should, the new desktop ‘dark’ scheme looks great, and does it boot fast – from POST to a ready desktop in just 35 seconds, damn that is fast!

My new desktop 2560 x 1024 (spanning 2 x 19″ monitors @ 1280 x 1024 each)

more later …

I’m eagerly awaiting the new Ubuntu release 10.04; I can then upgrade my recently installed 9.10 ‘Karmic Koala’ to an LTS* version which should see me through the next couple of years. I certainly like the new ‘darker’ theme that comes with it, far more appealing than the current & previous ‘brown’ theme.

But from all reports the following version 10.10 ‘Maverick Meerkat’ is going to be a ‘Windows’ breaker, and will be using the new Gnome 3 desktop environment which unfortunately wasn’t available in time for inclusion in 10.04 ‘Lucid Lynx’ (which uses the latest version of Gnome 2); and if 10.10 ‘Maverick’ is as ground breaking as it is intended to be, then I may upgrade to that when it’s released in October this year … I’ll wait n see on that though.

*LTS = Long Term Support – these releases use more stable versions of  applications, and are released every 2 years (in April) with support for 3 years on Desktop PCs, and 5 years on Servers. Other versions are released every 6 months (in April & October) with 18 months support, but use more ‘bleeding edge’ applications etc -  see here for more info.

I’d been thinking of upgrading the system graphics card to better cope with dual monitors, there was just to much lag and a few other little annoyances with the existing ASUS EAH3450 card – it would probably be ok running just one monitor, but  running 2 seemed to be stretching it’s capabilities.

So, after the debarcle with upgrading the system memory, or rather not upgrading it, I ended up with a credit note at my local PC shop. Rather than just leave the credit note just sitting there doing nothing, I decided to cash it in with an additional $90 and grabbed a new Sapphire HD5770 card.

Well the card is great, but unfortunately the new ATI drivers didn’t get along with Hardy 8.04 LTS – the ATI Catalyst Control Center simply wouldn’t open, and as such I couldn’t make any adjustments, nor set the dual monitors to run as one big desktop. (continue reading…)

Eagerly awaited, cause it’s looking so good in the beta version – and if it is as good as it promises to be, then I’ll update my OS to the 64 bit version from my 32 bit version of 8.04

I thought I’d try some video editing. First I recorded my desktop and effects using a JVC miniDV, then used ‘Kino’ to capture the footage (and I didn’t have to install any JVC software or drivers either).

Next I managed to edit out some of the dodgier scenes (as I’ve not used Kino before, I managed to crash it a few times). I then used ‘Sound Recorder’ to record a voice over, and saved it as a .wav file, and then dubbed it onto video using Kino. But when playing it back, I sounded like a ‘chipmunk’ … don’t know what happened there, I stuffed something up, so I went back and removed the sound track – now it’s just a silent movie.

Finally I exported the video as a mpeg1 file, and uploaded to my Youtube channel – while  the upload was happening, I downloaded and installed the video plugin for Wordpress so I could embed the video on this page.

Does this never end, will Microsoft never get it right ?

Alright, I’m using Ubuntu as my default OS, and have XP-SP3 installed via Virtualbox for those few apps that will not run in Wine; but out of  ‘fairness/curiosity’ I have other OS’s installed, mainly in Virtualbox, but also as bootable OS’s on my older AMD SktA Athlon XP system.

Both PC’s have several hard drives so I can run different OS’s without having to partition drives, I just pick the drive I wish to boot off, and run the OS installed on that drive (much tidier, much safer). So I have Win 7 RC1 installed in Virtualbox on my main PC, and also as a bootable OS on my Skt A system. (continue reading…)

In February 2008, I decided it was time to build a new PC; not that there was anything really wrong with my AMD Skt A system, but technology had moved on, and components had gotten more powerful, and cheaper.

Within 6 months of building the new system, my Win XP OS was bloated, bogging down and becoming very unreliable – I was getting so sick of this shit! I just wanted a reliable PC that would let me look after my business sites, browse the web, and handle my emails.

For a few years now, I’ve toyed with the idea of getting rid of’ Windoze’, and running a Linux based system instead. Over time I’ve installed and fiddled with various distros on spare hard drives, but nothing had seemed friendly enough to make the switch over from ‘Microsuck’.

get Ubuntu

Anyhow, I was trolling through a PC magazine sometime in August ‘08 and came across an article about the latest version of Ubuntu – 8.04 ‘Hardy Heron’. It sounded pretty good, so I downloaded the iso, burnt it to CD, then ran it ‘live’ from CD first (which doesn’t make any changes to existing system) just to see what it looked like – it was pretty impressive, not perfect, but certainly worth a closer look, so I installed it on a new drive.

(continue reading…)