It's been about three and a half hours since I complained about the lack of 64 bit Flash for Linux. Just a minute ago, I was checking out the latest on my RSS feed, and there was a Flash video on BoingBoing. Firefox popped up the little message, asking if I wanted to install the plugin.

I figured it wouldn't work, but I did it anyway. The package manager installed flashplugin-nonfree, and it worked! I can watch YouTube videos! I can use Google Analytics! Even MLB GameDay works! It's amazing!

So, I apologize, Ubuntu. You've been so good to me, and I nearly kicked you to the curb just because Fedora put out a new distro.

But I'm back now. I'm right back on the Ubuntu bandwagon.

On a side note, I'm available for freelance complaining. This is not the first time I've complained about something that was magically fixed soon afterwards. For a very reasonable hourly rate, I'll complain about something that you'd like fixed.

Results not guaranteed. Nor even expected.

I tried out Fedora for a few minutes. The Gnome desktop looks just like Ubuntu. I'm going to do some research and see what the real differences are.

When I rebooted into Ubuntu, I had some upgrades to install, which I did. One of them popped up this message:

A security certificate which was automatically created for your local system needs to be replaced due to a flaw which renders it insecure. This will be done automatically.

If you don't know anything about this, you can safely ignore this message.

That's pretty awesome.

Main Page - GRAMPS

GRAMPS is a Free Software Project for Genealogy, offering a professional genealogy program, and a wiki open to all. It is a community project, created, developed and governed by genealogists.

I've been trying to collect some family names in preparation for the baby. The wife and I wouldn't mind using a family name for the baby if we can find one we like, so we're trying to find one we like. A cousin of my grandmother gave her a copy of the Wolman family tree (My maternal grandmother's maiden name is Wolman). And I spent most of yesterday evening entering it into GRAMPS, the above-linked genealogy program. It's really just a graphical front end for some sort of custom database, it seems, but it's a pretty cool product for creating a family tree. There are websites that let you do it, but they seem to want money. But since this program was developed for Linux (and is included in the Ubuntu packages, for those using Ubuntu), it's free.

I think the final count when I finished last night was 388 people in the tree. Some of them are unnamed, and there were a few guesses where the writing got cut off when it was photocopied. But it's a pretty extensive picture of that part of the family. My next goal is to get something similar on my dad's side, and then work on the wife's family. And I'd like to get the important dates in - almost no one in the tree has a birth or a death date, and many of non-Wolmans don't have last names. This is especially common for women who married in and stopped using their maiden names, and I imagine many genealogists have this problem.

But it's kind of fun to find out all this stuff. Even if we don't find a name for the kid, I'd be happy with just having a big family tree to pass along.

Linux Downloader for Amazon MP3 Store

Amazon's launched a Linux-based downloader for its DRM-free MP3 music store -- fantastic news! Now if they'd only change the terms-of-service for the store to something sensible like "Don't do anything illegal with this music."

Well, this is pretty cool. Now I might actually USE the service. Up to now, you could buy single MP3s on whatever computer you wanted, but to get an album discount, you had to use Windows or Mac.

A lot of good news from the music industry lately. I might actually give buying music a try again. I haven't bought or downloaded any music since I bought the last (disappointing) Cake cd a year or two ago.

Overall, I'm really happy with Gutsy.  I find myself spinning the desktop cube just because I can.  But I haven't done much yet.  Today I think I'm going to create a separate partition for my /home directory, and I'm going to pull the pictures I took yesterday off my camera and see about uploading them to Flickr.

I have some small issues.  First, the gnash free flash plugin doesn't really work for Firefox on a 64 bit system.  The proprietary flash plugin is fine.

My panel icons are displaying at the center of the panel, not all the way on the right like they're supposed to.  I haven't really searched for a solution to this yet.

Other than that, this is a pretty slick OS.  Wireless has been perfect - the only setup I did was selecting my network and providing my WPA password once.  The frequent disconnects I got on Feisty have not happened at all.

Gutsy supports my Nvidia video card much better than Feisty.  I just had to choose a different driver in a drop down menu and then reset the screen resolution.

Anyway, if you've been thinking about trying out Ubuntu, now is the time.

I have the alternate cd now. This is going to work. I can feel it. Even better, the wife is cooking some weird cake for dessert. I'm sure it will be delicious.

So, the keyboard layout detection wizard is kind of fun. I don't have most of those keys, though. I feel a little left out.

It can't configure the network. That's probably not a big deal. I'll do that later. Now we're setting the computer name to "calvin", as in "and Hobbes". And now I'm formatting partitions. Since I don't want any remnant of Windows Vista, and I've backed up all the files I need, I chose to reformat the entire drive. Some may not want to do that. But really, who wants to dual boot Vista and Ubuntu? On one hand, you have an OS that pretty much everyone has acknowledged is a giant mess. On the other hand, you have the first real alternative to Windows and Mac OS that is getting some real traction and publicity. So, goodbye, Vista.

I know my brothers-in-law, and some of my other readers are probably aghast at my dismissal of OSX. But Macs hate me, and Windows hates everyone, so I don't feel bad.

The alternate installer is pretty easy to use. Sure, it looks like something from 1989. But that's okay. Just so long as it works. It's installing software now. That's probably a good thing.

And the wife is beating something in the KitchenAid. Probably eggs. Actually, it's butter and sugar. I know because I just checked. And the software installation is stuck on 6%. Hopefully that's not a problem.

There it goes. It jumped up to 18%, and now 22%. Things are going swimmingly.

Ooh, now it's installing the GRUB boot loader. "You're a grub boot loader", the wife would say.

Now I'm restarting. This is exciting.

Okay, I'm all booted up. Unfortunately, it's at 800X600 resolution. Let's see if we can fix that.

It looks like I'm missing the latest Nvidia driver. Clicking the little icon between the network icon and the volume icon doesn't seem to get me anywhere. Wireless works, though.

So, let's run some updates.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot

Don't know if this is working at all. Going without a guide is a little harder than following in someone else's footsteps.

I just tried to change the video driver to "nv", the open source Nvidia driver, in Administration->"Screens and Graphics". I chose the driver, hit the "Test" button, and now have a blank screen. Sweet.

alt-ctrl-delete

I feel like I'm running Windows.

I went to System->Administration->Restricted Drivers Manager and enabled the NVIDIA driver. Now it's downloading. This reminds me that there is no way my dad or my sister, who have both expressed interest in Ubuntu, are going to be able to install this. I think they'd like it if someone else installed it, but this requires more comfort with a computer than either of them has. I hate to bash the install process, but it's just not going to work for people who aren't computer geeks.

It's asking for a restart now, so I'm obliging. I'm hoping for some sweet graphics to be enabled now. That would rule.

Well, that didn't really work. But you know what does?

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Go through the wizard, reboot, and then go to System->Preferences->Screen Resolution, and you can choose 1280X800. I think I can actually get a better resolution out of the video card, but this will do for now.

So, things seem to be working. Wireless was painless. In fact, I've never had an easier time of connecting to a wireless network. This is groundbreaking.

Gutsy is definitely an improvement - this install took me much less time than Feisty did. I'll have to update you all when I get a chance to play with things, but I'm currently pretty happy. I haven't tested anything, like hibernate, or the sound, or any of the software. But I'm just going to assume that everything is awesome. I think the wife is feeling a little neglected, so I'm going to go wake her up and tell her that she's more important than the computer. With any luck, she'll believe me.

I'm sort of live-blogging my Ubuntu install.  The following would probably be more interesting if it actually, you know, worked. 

So, we just finished some delicious Saag Aloo, and now I'm going to install Gutsy while the wife watches Law and Order: SVU.

I've got a black screen so far. That's not good. BTW, I'm writing here on my old laptop while I install on the new one. Just FYI.

I just got a warning, telling me that Ubuntu is running in low graphics mode. That's not cool. I chose 1440X900 from the "generic" monitor resolution list. Now it's running local boot scripts. This doesn't seem good. I was kind of hoping it would just boot up without my input. I'm staying postive, though.

I just ctrl-alt-deleted. It wasn't doing anything.

I tried the default 800X600 resolution this time. Now it's running local boot scripts again. I'm not optimistic.

This Live CD stuff just isn't working. I'm downloading the alternate install cd now. I'll be back in an hour or so.

So, I'm going to install Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon. It's going to be awesome. You may have already seen my guide to getting 7.04 onto a Lenovo Thinkpad T61. Well, this time I'm doing things a little differently. First, I'm going to try the Live CD install rather than the alternate install, because I just have faith that it's going to work. Then, I'm completely blowing away Windows. Vista is stupid, and I haven't missed it since I got the Thinkpad. Which is good, because I broke it installing 7.04.

Anyway, I'm going to install a second partition for my /home folder, which lots of people say you should do. And everything is going to be awesome. I just know it.

First of all, though, let me complain about downloading the stupid ISO. I tried it yesterday, release day. After two hours, I was at 2%. I killed it, and tried again later. No dice. I even tried wget from the command line, thinking that maybe without whatever overhead Firefox introduces to the process, it might be better. No dice. So I tried again today. My ever-helpful brother-in-law (I should probably write down the euphemisms I use for my various brothers-in-law so I can keep them straight, but whatever) suggested that I might have better luck with BitTorrent. That seemed like a good idea, since a huge number of users slows a download but speeds up a torrent.

No dice again. Why? Because Satan's ISP (Comcast) has decided that P2P=BAD for all values of P2P. Never mind that what I'm doing is downloading totally free software and saving them bandwidth at the same time. I mean, I won't get into illegal downloading and all that. But what I'm trying to do is TOTALLY LEGAL and encouraged by the creator of the intellectual property or whatever we call software these days. But Comcast can't allow it, because some people use P2P for illegal things. Up yours, Comcast. If it wasn't for your dirty monopoly on cable internet here, I would have cancelled your service today.

Anyway, my laptop is currently sitting two feet from the router, plugged in by wire, because my wireless is being finicky and I don't have any long ethernet cables anymore. It's maybe 1/3 done with the download.

If all goes well from here on out, I'll have this working tonight. If all goes as expected, I'll polish off this bottle of scotch trying to get it to work.

I probably should have guessed that I wouldn't be the only one downloading Ubuntu 7.10 the day it came out.  Maybe it will actually work tonight.

And next weekend, I'm going to put Ubuntu on my dad's old Windows 98 box.  That should be interesting.  I'm thinking about trying Xubuntu, the lightweight version that requires almost nothing in terms of processor and RAM.  Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft and Apple had an OS that ran on 128 megs of RAM and 1.5 gigs of hard drive space?

I guess that would keep you from upgrading, though, wouldn't it?

Full Circle Magazine » Issue 4

Full Circle - the Ubuntu Community Magazine are proud to
announce our fourth issue.

I know, I'm going to get more user submitted complaints about rambling on about Ubuntu, but I'm more and more excited about Linux as a real alternative to Windows.  I've been thinking about trying to install it on my parents' computers because I can log in remotely and fix things for them.

I mean, my dad is running Windows 98 on his desktop.  As a computer dork, this is roughly the same as a dentist allowing his father to lose all his teeth due to cavities.

Anyway, Full Circle Magazine is accessible for the non-geek, although some of it will seem like a foreign language.  But I mention it more as a symbol of things to come - there was an article in the previous issue (That I actually haven't read, but the new issue mentions it) about someone installing Ubuntu on his grandmother's computer, and how happy she's been with it.  When people who didn't use a computer until well into adulthood start using and being happy with Linux, it's good for everyone.

Imagine you could go buy a computer, and they'd ask you, "Which operating system would you like?", and you could choose whatever you wanted.  There would be real choice, and real competition.  Right now, for the vast majority of people, you either buy a Mac or you run Windows.  But Ubuntu isn't far off.  And if Ubuntu succeeds at bringing Linux to the masses (And their deal with Dell is a huge step forward), then other distributions will follow.

Anyway, it's exciting.  At least, I'm excited.