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Archive for March, 2009

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) – My Thoughts So Far

21 Mar

As I’m sure plenty of you are aware, Ubuntu 9.04 is due to be released in little over a month’s time. Testing is in full swing (Alpha 6 at time of writing), and the beta should be coming in 2 or 3 weeks (that’s a guess on my part, please don’t hold me to it!). I figured it was about time to try and install it, partly because I’m interested to see how well it currently runs on my dual-head setup, partly because I need to write an article on installing it for Linux Identity ;)

So – I popped in the Jaunty Live CD, got to the boot menu. All is going well so far, I expected it to not boot though due to my graphics card (Nvidia 9500GT) and a Dual-Screen setup….ok I’m on the desktop (that was quick!). My dual-screen setup was detected just fine (with both monitors at the correct resolution no less!) I was already impressed just from that. I had a play around, and it took me all of 5 minutes to decide that I wanted to give it a proper try out, and to backup my home and install it properly.

1 reboot later, past the (in my opinion) great new GDM theme and nice new splash screen, I’m logged in, installing my nvidia drivers (180.xx) as recommended by a little pop-up. After that install and reboot, I get compiz effects working great, as well as an extended desktop – awesome!

After a bit more playing, I have the dust theme installed (it’s come a long way since I last used it), as well as having emesene using the new notification system (which I have to say looks great!). I’m also running on an ext4 based system, and so far – all is well. Hopefully I’ll have more to say when the beta is released, but this is running on my main desktop, so it’s getting plenty of use :)

UPDATE:

I’ve got to say, after using jaunty some more this morning, one thing struck me…it’s REALLY quick. Boot is way faster than 8.10 and running general. Shutdown is quicker too :)

 
19 Comments

Posted in Linux, Ubuntu

 

All Settled In

15 Mar

I’m running from my new VPS now. It has a healthy 1GB RAM (much better than the 384 I used to have!). And everything seems to be running smoothly.

I did have possibly the most unusual method of moving my blog over – in that I zipped up the directory, moved it over to the new VPS, and imported the database, same for the apache2 settings. Luckily, 98% of it went without a hitch! A few issues with virtual hosts and mod_rewrite, but that’s all.

I now have a constant IRC presence, because I’m no longer limited by the VPS provider on what I can and can’t use (gotta love having a friend with a server!). And yes – it’s running Ubuntu 8.04 Server ;)

 
4 Comments

Posted in Internet, Ubuntu

 

New VPS

13 Mar

I know I know, I’m terrible for switching.

But anyway – I’ve got a new VPS, and I’ll have to take the site down for a while to switch the domain over to the new VPS and set everything up.

I’m doing what I can to minimise the downtime, and I don’t know whether it’ll be later today or sometime in the week. But if you see my site down in that time – don’t panic, it just means I’m mid move :)

New post when I’ve finished the move.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Internet

 

Location, Location, Location

09 Mar

Nothing to do with the TV show ;)

I mentioned a few days ago that I would be moving http://www.joeb454.co.uk to point to this domain, which I have now done. I’ll be removing the old wordpress hosted blog sometime in the near future as well.

I should note that all the links clicked here do correspond to http://blog.joeb454.com. However after a quick check, lets say you wanted to login, you could still visit joeb454.co.uk/wp-login and that would work just as you would expect it to :)

 
2 Comments

Posted in Internet

 

Amazon Hit By Economic Downturn?

09 Mar

Ok this post isn’t half as serious as it first sounds ;)

I was reading a post on the Ubuntu Forums about Amazon‘s rather steep prices. I can only assume that it’s because of the economy, that they’re needing to increase prices ;)

(Note: I’m well aware that the layout of the images has messed up the theme somewhat, though I can’t figure out why! Sorry!)

I'll take 2 pairs...

I'll take 2 pairs...

A Bargain!

A Bargain!

 
3 Comments

Posted in Internet

 

Escaping iTunes

06 Mar

Recently my parents, and my brother, have all been complaining that the computer downstairs is too slow…which…it is, I found out yesterday that it’s a 5 year old install of Windows XP – already things don’t look good.

Regardless, I had a think about what I could do. Reinstalling XP was the first thing that came to mind, but then I’d have to spend another 5 hours doing updates to it and reinstalling everything, which I abhor doing, as I’m sure many people can relate to. I then stopped and had a think about what they all *actually* use the PC for.

They use Office 2007, Internet Explorer/Firefox (the use of each varies between people), BBC iPlayer, and iTunes. That’s actually just about all they use. Now, Office can be replaced with OpenOffice.org, that isn’t really a problem, except for the huge UI change from the ribbon interface back to the menu’s etc. Firefox is natively installed, and they’re starting to use it more anyway. BBC iPlayer is web based, but the desktop client for Linux can be installed with Adobe Air…

This just leaves iTunes, and while I’m aware there are plenty of alternatives that can be used, they all lack the one massively important feature for the rest of my family. The iTunes Store.

They use it quite regularly, which presents a great problem. How can I switch them to Ubuntu but keep the iTunes store? A VM? A dual boot? Both would work, but a VM on a P4 isn’t the most practical solution, even with 2GB RAM. A dual boot would essentially take me back to step 1, and Ubuntu would never get used.

So I’m in a bit of a pickle really…I’ve said I’ll sort the computer out for them, but it’s just a case of how it gets “sorted”.

 
35 Comments

Posted in Ubuntu

 

New Home!

05 Mar

As I posted earlier today (sorry for any Planet spam!), I planned on moving my Planet Ubuntu feed over to blog.joeb454.com later in the week.

I changed my mind and did it about an hour after posting that last post. Hopefully I remembered to use the correct feed type for WordPress, else I’ll have to edit it again!

From what I’ve seen though, the site seems to be holding up pretty well, It’s not using gross amounts of RAM just yet, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it :) The only real issue I’ve run into is that it doesn’t seem to want to email me when a comment is held for moderation, or when a comment is left at all.

I’m not sure why it doesn’t, because it sends out emails for registration.  I’ll have to wait and see how that one goes :)

 
3 Comments

Posted in Internet

 

Moving Home?

03 Mar

I’m thinking of moving this blog over to joeb454.com

As some of you know, I recently bought a MacBook, and I realised I didn’t have a page up on my .com domain, so I decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and had a play with iWeb ’09. The end result isn’t bad, and moving the blog over to my VPS provider would mean 2 things:

1) I’d actually be using my VPS for something
2) I’d have a more fine grained control over my blog, because I would be hosting it myself. Currently this blog is hosted by wordpress.com

It could mean I’d need to upgrade my VPS package, because currently I only have 384 MB RAM on there. I guess it all depends on how much MySQL decides that it wants to take, though before upgrading I’d look into tweaking some MySQL settings to see if I can reduce the amount it needs.

Ultimately I’d like to do this just because of number 1 above. But also it would teach me some more about Apache, MySQL, possibly PHP. I may also look into changing the site at some point, possibly to a Drupal installation, but we’ll have to wait and see :)

Any thought’s on whether you think this would be a worthwhile move, or any recommendations you have on tweaking various settings on the server (it runs Ubuntu 8.04) would be fantastic!

 
4 Comments

Posted in Apple, Internet, Ubuntu