Linux Daily

EDIT: For some unholy reason, if you google “ubuntu review” this article comes in 4th place. If this is the reason you’re reading this, let me clear something out. This is not a review of Ubuntu, this is a review of Ubuntu 8.10 on the acer aspire one. The disk on the AA1 is so slow it can’t handle it. Ubuntu’s performance on laptops up to 5 years olds can be quite good, depending really specifically on the hardware, so don’t take this article into any wider consideration.

I have been using ubuntu 8.10 on the AA1 since I posted these installation instructions in mid-november.

In a nutshell: it’s terrible. Seriously, I hate it. The performance is unbelievably slow. It is constantly hanging on I\O, meaning that it’s constantly reading and writing stuff to the disk. Since the disk is really slow, everything is really slow. It’s my only complaint, but as you might imagine, it’s vital. I’m avoiding using the damn thing because most it’s impossible to work with any fluidity. If I had to take a guess, it’s probably GNOME that’s too heavy. I could try to install a different desktop environment like XFCE or LXDE, but it’s more stuff occupying the disk… it’s time to try something different.

Just a side note. Apart from performance, it works as expected. Any hardware problem is solved by installing sickboy’s kernels, and you can use it in any debian system, not just ubuntu.

So now I’m gonna try a different distro. This guy on the acer aspire one user forum highly recommends sidux. It uses KDE Lite. I’m not familiar with KDE nor wish to be, but what the hell, I only hear good things about it, might as well take for a spin.

If it’s good, I’ll post detailed install instructions like I did for ubuntu.

Tux radar, linux format’s blog from what I could understand, issued the warning: For 24 hours you can download a full resolution pdf of the current march edition! Check tux radar for more info.

I used to recommend installing packages using aptitude in the terminal, now I got apt:// links going on pretty much all package references I have in the blog. I also put some extra links when the package’s were different from ubuntu 8.04. Just click, boom install. Score 1 for ubuntu. I put the warning in the sidebar since new users might find this confusing and maybe have concerns about security.  I hope you find it as usefull as I do.

I also changed commands in the terminal from

$this

to

this

Hope you enjoy the changes. By the way, major post coming up on migrating to lxde with some usefull hacks. I’m still trying to hack my way thru it though…

I always hate it when people blog stuff that is out of the scope of the blog. I have the feed for the linuxplanet blogs and really find it stupid when instead of blogging about linux, people start talking about how they’re moving to a new house, they’re a bit sick, their dog has got blue balls. I honestly don’t care, or rather, don’t give a flying fuck. That’s why this blog does not have a post wishing you a very merry christmas.

But, since this is the end of the year,  it’s a good time to do some recap. I started this blog in august, and it’s been climbing in revelance steadily ever since. This month of december saw ~2.900 visits with a minimal amount of new posts. Most people come here by googling about the problems I offer a solution. That’s a pretty cool thing,  I hope people find what they’re looking for. The content I post here isn’t top notch quality, but at least offers some good insight to getting stuff done.
On a side note, the reason there was barely anything new this month is quite simple. I blog mostly about problems and solutions, none of which I found since the last post.

Finally, I wish you all a happy new year and thanx for visiting the blog. Hope to see catch you around here in 2009 : -)

Oh, and while I’m at it, have you donated to wikipedia? Don’t be a cheap bastard, c’mon. I gave them €2.50 . My mother always said I was going to be a great man.

The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, and boy, is it fast and decent looking. Kicks that horrible XFCE in the nuts.

I highly recommend giving it a try, if you use ubuntu there are some instructions at ubuntu geek.

Project homepage at lxde.org .

It’s linux time.

Hi,

I’m an electrical engineering student and this is my blog about linux.

The first thing I should talk about is the blog itself. Why start a linux blog?

There are two main reasons for this. First off, because it became relevant. Linux is now becoming something you cannot ignore. It’s coming, and it’s coming really fast. This can easily be the year for desktop linux, there are now several desktops and laptops with linux pre-installed. But that per itself is not the reason linux became relevant, it’s because it was a commercial success. Specially laptops. Linux usage is growing by the minute, so talking about it, reporting my own experiences with it is… well, not important, but it isn’t irrelevant. Yes, my vocabulary can be somewhat scarce. :-p

The second reason is I use linux everyday and have had all kinds of experiences. Small problems, big problems, major googling problems, massive frustrations and sometimes even tremendously good experiences. I know *some* programming and had some previous computer experience but can easily put myself in the shoes of a complete newbie. So my idea is talk about those problems here, and maybe they can be useful to some other user.

Linux Daily is about daily usage of linux from the point of a linux newbie and windows user. Let the good times roll : -)