From the moment I bought my new laptop I’ve been struggling with Vista. Not because it’s not intuitive, or I hate the way it looks, or because it is so different from previous versions, or it’s more expensive than other OS’s. I’ve been struggling because I bought a brand spankin’ new laptop and it’s sluggish.
$1,299 bought me a beautiful little Red Sony Vaio with an Intel Core2 Duo (2.00GHz) with 2 GB RAM and Vista Home Premium. Vista “rates” my system at a 3.1. All the menus are slow to load, I sometimes wait close to 15 seconds for something that used to be instantaneous in XP. I’ve gone in and turned off all kinds of shiny whatchamacallits and whosamagiggies and the system is better but not great. I also can’t seem to get through the whole process of burning a DVD from my digital JVC home videos using several different tools. Also Photoshop CS3 is so slow I’m thinking of trying to install Photoshop 5.5 again but it’s probably not going to run on Vista. Oh the humanity…
So, back to my title. I have another laptop. The one that I replaced with the new VAIO. What to do. In the course of dealing with Vista, I decided to seek an alternative. A lot of ColdFusion folks are blogging about how great Macs are and I would have considered going down that route but you must own Apple hardware in order to install and run a Mac OS. That lead me to Linux. I have in the past installed a few flavors and managed to get one or two up and running years ago but once it was running, I found it not very intuitive to use. At least for me, that has all changed with Ubuntu 7.10. I can’t recall where I had heard of this flavor but in general, I got the notion that it was something special.
I visited the site: Ubuntu.com and downloaded the 7.10 Desktop .ISO version. I slapped in a blank CD and in a couple of minutes had an install CD. less than 20 minutes later I was up and running with a brand new OS. The bare minimum RAM for this is only 256MB as opposed to Vista’s 2GB (Vista really requires 4GB if you ask me). This OS is intuitive, comes with a clean desktop, firefox and mail, graphical software panel for adding and removing software to your system, OS updater which checks for the latest patches, a list of already installed applications such as games, graphics programs like GIMP, Pidgin (formally GAIM) for instant messaging, Open Office, Movie player, Music Manager, Photo Manager etc. The thing that most impressed me is that it recognized all my hardware and I was able to browse my windows networked drives with no trouble.
I pulled up the Rhythmbox Music Player and told it where my music files were on the network and it indexed them and I was up and listening to Paramore’s Riot in minutes. I installed eclipse by going to [applications], Add/Remove, then choosing “All available applications” and then typing in eclipse in the search box. I ticked the Eclipse option, then Applied Changes and in 2 or three minutes I was up and running with version 3.2
I wanted to “map a drive”, as I would call it in Windows. After a quick search, I came across this little posting and in minutes I had a “mapped drive” to my little NAS.
I’m not ready to say that this is going to be my development box of choice just yet. It’s all still very new to me. I will however say that I’ve never been so taken by a linux-based OS as I have with this one.
I’ll continue to blog about my experiences building ColdFusion applications using the Ubuntu OS as time goes on.
Download your new OS now!
Vince Collins
January 19, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I tried Ubuntu about 4-5 months ago when I was between my PC and my new Mac. I liked it. Not as much as the Mac, but it sure was a heck of a lot friendlier then Linux of the past. I had a _lot_ of trouble with monitor resolutions. It took a few days to get past that, and I don’t think I ever fixed multi-monitor support - but outside of that, it is a darn impressive OS.
January 19, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Hey Ray,
After your comment, I just tried to hook up a ViewSonic VA520 (4 year old 15 inch LCD). I went to System, Administration, Screens and Graphics, then selected 2nd screen, selected Viewsonic - VA520 from the list, set it to 1024 X 800 and said OK. It then said I needed to reboot which was kind of a bummer to have to do. I then restarted it and and the system just sat there with a black screen. Now I’m in the process of trying to get it back to it’s original state. ha ha ha. Thanks a lot Ray
I can see your point! Time for another reboot!
January 19, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I had the same problem recently, Ubuntu still lacks decent multi monitor support this sounds like it is coming in the next version due in April.
If you can boot to a command line (I think this is one of the options in the boot menu) then type in
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
this should recreate the xorg file for you which holds all the information on your screens, keyboard and mouse etc. It will just run you through some of the questions you would have answered in the setup.
January 19, 2008 at 5:15 pm
This is really good to know Mark thanks! I was after the second reboot able to get a 800×600 screen and then I disabled the second monitor and picked a generic monitor for my laptop and was then able to get it back. I’m in the process of downloading ATI’s latest driver for linux for my laptop (HP dv8000). The screen looks fine but I figured I may as well learn a little about linux by trying to install the correct driver. We will see.
January 19, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I had the same issue with Vista so I switched to Ubuntu also. I like Amorak for music on my Ubuntu laptop. And Xine for a movie player. I love Compiz and Awn for cool affects. Check out http://tinyurl.com/2jb2kj for more info on them.
January 19, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Remember to backup config files (xorg.conf) before tweaking.
I’ve actually been messing with dual screens today - I’ve got things working but there are some limitations depending on if you want to run Compiz or not…
Also you probably didn’t have to reboot - just logout and login which restarts your X session. CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE does the same thing.
What kind of video does the laptop have?
January 20, 2008 at 8:30 am
Thanks Jim,
The Exact Laptop (only with 2 GB RAM instead of 512MB) that I have Ubuntu running on is this one:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00574102&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN
The Video Card is a ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200M IGP with 128MB DDR (dedicated)
Any insight you might have for making this work would be appreciated and thanks for the keyboard shortcut to log out!
January 20, 2008 at 8:33 am
Mike, I’ll try Amorak out however I am already very impressed with the Rhythmbox Music Player.
May 14, 2008 at 4:10 am
Try the Latest Hardy Heron release.
For monitor support even Gutsy was ok with all the systems i installed it on ( it auto configures to any monitor) I have used LG, Viewsonic 15″, 17″ Wide as well as square with no issues. I configures close to 6 machines laptops & desktops at our office with Ubuntu & we havent had a problem
May 14, 2008 at 7:41 am
Thanks Parth,
It’s great to hear dual monitor support may be getting a lot easier for Ubuntu users. I haven’t yet made the switch to Ubuntu fully. I have become so dependent on Adobe Photoshop. The minute I’m on my Ubuntu machine and I need to edit an image, I get frustrated. I’m not a fan of GIMP but maybe I haven’t given it a fair chance.