In our living room we have an older Dell Desktop using it with MythTV as Multimedia and TV Center outputting to a Dell 24 ” Screen (awesome quality that thing is!). Anyway, I started with 7.10 and after a little while got everything working. Not without headaches though, especially for the lirc configuration (Basically, the default lirc does not work and in my custom made configuration files I used different names for it).
Hm, I was so happy about the easy Ubuntu installation, but slowly I’m getting fairly annoyed with bugs. Yesterday I fixed the Eclipse installation with a separate start script and today it is OpenOffice that let’s me down. I send myself a word document from work that has been edited in OpenOffice but saved in word format for compatibility reasons. And now I can’t work on it anymore, as 
even when in edit mode and content write protection disabled I can’t edit it.
Lucky I thought I was as there is a bug report filed already that gives you workarounds. The issue is related to Word documents with Table of Contents in Openoffice under Ubuntu ‘Hardy’ 8.04. For me the deletion of the Table of Contents had no effect at all, but un-ticking the ‘Protect against manual changes’ option in the first tab of the index editing window did it. Unticked it, saved it, closed it and opened it again – works!
Eclipse looked like it was running fine on a first glance, but than it started crashing as soon as I tried to open files from the Project Explorer. I’m using the latest ubuntu-eclipse 3.2 and it happened regardless whether I started in Java or PHP (added PHPEclipse) perspective. I tried a couple of things to get it running and at the end found a way to make it work.
I like to play around and see how things work. So I did with Ubuntu, first I added the 32Bit version of the Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) Ubuntu to my Computer, which came out of the box with Vista Business. And than I added the 64Bit version of Gutsy Gibbon to it, just to see how they differentiate and if I still can get most of the stuff running. I actually did most, but not all, so use the 32Bit version and have a fine system (now 8.04 ‘Hardy’ Ubuntu) working with Thunderbird sharing files and profiles with Vista, Eclipse and some MySQL tools. So far, so good. Running smooth enough to decide I don’t need the 64Bit Ubuntu right now, since I don’t have time to play around test. And once it’s gone I want to merge the partition it has been on with the NTFS data partition to get some more space.
Tags: deleting linux, gparted, grub, partitions, Update
Of course it works, it did before. One could say for ages. But never that seamless as now. My T61 laptop is not brand, but fairly new and once I had the resolution configured properly it just runs sooo nicely, it made me write a post about it.
Tags: 8.04, comparison, compatibility, ease of use, future, gartner, operating system, trends, Ubuntu, usability, usb, vista, windows, wireless
My T61 (model 7664-18G, NVidia NVS 140M, 14.1″ with 1440×900 Display, Core2 Duo 2GHz, 3GB RAM, Intel Pro/Wireless 4965AGN etc. – see IBM specs and Hardware 4 Linux for further details) came with Windows Vista Business 32Bit and of course it did not take me long to give Linux it’s place on my hard disk. Ubuntu is my favorite flavor because of its ease of installation and use, the clean GUI (Knoppix menus are loaded with too many tools and OpenSUSE … well, just have been happy for too long with Debian) and of course the awesome documentation and support sites. First off I installed 7.10 in 32Bit in parallel to Vista and later on the 64Bit as well. Everything basic worked fine, so from now on I will stick to my 64Bit system, even though it gives me some trouble from time to time, e.g. with Eclipse and Skype installation. But found solutions and workarounds in forums and am happy bunny.
I like Apple. For their ideas, innovation and (more and more fading away) outsider-nerdy-special part of the whole software, hardware and entertainment industry. They are/were different than Microsoft. I say that even though I don’t own a Mac. And it’s a yet missing in that previous sentence, since I really want to have one for a long time.
