Avant Window Navigator on Hardy

I still use Hardy Heron on a couple of machines, and unfortunately for me, the Avant Window Navigator that ships with Hardy doesn't really come with any of the useful applets. It's as bare bones as you can get.

To get around this problem, I have to introduce some development repositories into my installation. This is detailed in this article on installing Avant for Hardy.

It's really quite straightforward. It's just a matter of adding these two lines into the third party repositories of Synaptic:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main

After that, the AWN applets package should be available. You will, however, have to uninstall the existing AWN manager as it conflicts with the new packages.

New Ubuntu options

While poking around in the Jaunty Jackalope download page, I noticed several new additions to the usual download options. For the past few releases, we've only had to contend with the Desktop Install, the Server Install, and the Alternate Install Edition, all with the 32-bit and 64-bit variants. These all fell within the 700MB size limit of CD-Rs. But with Jaunty Jackalope, there are a few more:

First, there's now the Install/Live DVD, which weighs in at 4.3GB. There's no stated differences with the standard CD edition, but I presume that this will have more packages preloaded into the CD, e.g., compilers, development environments, and databases. The bigger size will be a pain to download, but it should be easier to redistribute the software to organizations without broadband Internet.

Next, there's the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, available as a .img file. As per the description:

This USB image allows you to run Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) from a USB storage device without installing UNR on your computer. While running in this "live" environment you will be running a full desktop environment and have the option to install UNR permanently, as well as installing UNR alongside an existing operating system. This USB image is optimized for netbooks with screens up to 10". You will need at least 256MB of RAM to install from this image.

For almost all PCs. This includes most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows, as well as newer Apple Macintosh systems based on Intel processors. Choose this if you are at all unsure.

Finally, there's the MID USB image, meant for mobile Internet devices, also available as a .img file.

The MID USB image allows you to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later. This USB image is optimized for handheld devices with 4-7" touchscreens and limited processing power. You will need at least 128MB of RAM to install from this image.

Now I wish I knew which MID devices Ubuntu runs on so I can go out and buy 'em!

Image files are written to USB using the usb-imagewriter utility, as outlined in the USB image how-to.

Curious at these developments, I also had a look at the Intrepid and Hardy download pages. The Netbook remix had also been introduced to 8.10, but with 8.04, only the DVD option is now available.

Paritioning misadventures, part 2: restoring GRUB

GRUB is the Grand Unified Bootloader, which takes care of loading the operating system when the computer starts. My problem was: I hosed my GRUB configuration when I rearranged my partitions and inadvertently renamed the one where the GRUB files were supposed to be. So upon bootup, I could see the GRUB prompt and an Error 15. Not a nice sight.

Fortunately, GRUB problems seem to be a bit common and there are several helpful suggestions on the web. A succinct summary on Ubuntu Forums solved my problem.

Simply following the Quick Start steps solved my major problem of recovering GRUB. On next bootup, I already saw the familiar GRUB prompt. Whew!

Ordinarily, GRUB problems crop up when you install Windows with Ubuntu. In my case, the problem happened because I was careless. All the same, trouble fixed. I'm now dual booting between 32-bit and 64-bit Hardy.

Partitioning misadventures, part 1: gparted

As a solution to my earlier dilemma on x86_64 vs. i386, I decided to have it both ways and dual-boot my system. My plan was to allocate 10GB each for the 32-bit and 64-bit Hardy, with the remaining 140GB or so of space as a shared /home partition. I had already divided my hard disk into a 10GB operating system partition and 150GB for home. Luckily, the Ubuntu installation provides a way to resize partitions.

Unfortunately, I wasn't careful with how I managed the repartitioning. I ended up with 10GB for the first OS partition, 12GB for a home partition, 10GB for the second OS partition, and the remaining space unallocated.

I could just have borne with the minor inconvenience but I anal-retentive obsessive compulsive that I am, I just had to have everything right.

My solution was to use gparted, the Gnome graphical partition editor. gparted lets you manipulate your partitions, including resize, transfer, and copy. It used to come with the default Ubuntu installation in the previous versions, but seems to have disappeared from Hardy. No matter: it's a quick install from the repositories.

In hindsight, I would have fared much better if I had simply run gparted from the LiveCD. As it turned out, I installed gparted on both operating system partitions and worked locally. It was a bit of a headache manipulating mounted partitions. Anyway, lesson learned and mission accomplished.

When I rebooted, though, I hit another brick wall: gparted had changed my partition allocations. That wrought havoc with my GRUB configuration. I eventually fixed that.

x86_64 vs. i386

Seems like such a shame to be running the 32-bit OS when I could be using the speedier 64-bit version but ultimately the decision came down to user experience. The quad-core machine that I just bought doubles as my main desktop and is occasionally used by my sister, too. The kicker was Flash Player: it doesn't run on x86_64 architecture machines, at least not without significant acrobatics, and I wasn't willing to go through the contortions.

Flash isn't a mission-critical application by any means and we could all do better without it. But the thing is that some sites that I visit (and many that my sister does) needs Flash to render properly. So...

It may just be a subjective difference but the 64-bit Hardy Heron does seem much faster than its 32-bit cousin. In the meantime, though, I will have to stick it out with half the bits until the extent of my folly fully sinks in.

I still have the same complaints about Firefox 3 not running all my plugins but I've decided that I can live with the lack for the time being. I still do have Scribefire and StumbleUpon, and I'm sure Del.icio.us and Zotero will follow suit not long from now.

Other updates:

• I finally figured out what was wrong with my KVM virtual machines. The virtualization still needs a bit more work, but is passable enough for development.
• Inkscape, Comix, and all the other apps I use are available in the 64-bit repositories and ran without a hitch.

More updates: d'oh! what was I thinking? Dual-boot!

Hardy caveats

I've worked with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron for a little over a day, just enough to give a quick review of what's to like and what could be done better.

On the plus side, it's a generally smooth transition from the previous versions of Ubuntu. Nothing significant has really changed, and where there have been changes (e.g., the CD now gives a direct installation option, the default wallpaper is much nicer, and new applications for Torrent client and CD burning) they've largely been for the better.

On the down side are things that I expected to work more seamlessly but didn't.

A major disappointment is Firefox 3.0. Some plugins will work, but many others won't. This is because Firefox 3.0 is still so new and still in Beta and many plugins were written for the previous version. This situation should ease over eventually, but if you rely on several Firefox plugins to do your work, you may want to hold off on that upgrade until Firefox 3.0 becomes more mainstream.

Other disappointments stem from inflated expectations based on the announcements. I was expecting to see Inkscape as part of the CD, but it wasn't. I was also expecting to see some visible control for the new firewall but that, too, is absent.

The biggest disappointment, however, is the virtualization capabilities. I've got it working now but the experience was not as well-integrated as I thought it would be. There's still a lot of trial and error involved in getting it up (as opposed to VMWare before) and things like networking unexpectedly broke after I modified the settings as per instructions.

Final verdict: if you're willing to play with its new features, give Hardy Heron a try. But if your work demands something more stable, you might be better off with Gutsy Gibbon in the meantime.

Ubuntu 8.04 on an Intel Quad Core

I'm writing this post using Mozilla 3.0b5 on a 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 that's running on an Intel Q6600 quad-core processor. Yup, that's right: spanking new browser on a spanking new operating system on a spanking new computer.

After close to six years of hobbling along on an AMD Duron, I've decided it was time for a change. What better time than to coincide it with the new release of Ubuntu LTS?

Here are the full specs of my new machine:

description: Computer
width: 32 bits
capabilities: smbios-2.4 dmi-2.4 smp-1.4 smp
configuration: boot=normal cpus=0 uuid=520EC372-A5F9-11DC-8002-000EA68F75BC
*-core
description: Motherboard
product: DQ35MP
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
version: AAD82086-801
serial: BQMP74900952
slot: Base Board Chassis Location
*-cpu
description: CPU
product: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
version: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
slot: J1PR
size: 1596MHz
capacity: 4GHz
width: 64 bits
clock: 266MHz
*-cache:0
description: L2 cache
physical id: 2
slot: Unknown
size: 4MiB
capacity: 4MiB
capabilities: asynchronous internal write-back unified
*-cache:1
description: L1 cache
physical id: 4
slot: Unknown
size: 32KiB
capacity: 32KiB
capabilities: asynchronous internal write-back data
*-cache
description: L1 cache
physical id: 3
slot: Unknown
size: 32KiB
capacity: 32KiB
capabilities: asynchronous internal write-back instruction
*-firmware
description: BIOS
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 5
version: JOQ3510J.86A.0559.2007.0726.0425 (07/26/2007)
size: 64KiB
capacity: 4032KiB
*-memory
description: System Memory
physical id: 10
slot: System board or motherboard
size: 2GiB


The reason I got this baby is to run virtualized operating systems. Not exactly at the bleeding edge, but quite adequate for my needs. The sweet thing is that it only cost me under P22,000.

More updates in the days to follow.