Archives for October, 2006
Upgrade to Ubuntu Edgy Eft
This was by far the easiest upgrade yet. The last one I documented was a GUI-based upgrade using Synaptic. This time, I went with a command line version and it couldn’t be easier, assuming you know the commands. This is what I think makes this more difficult for the average user. I used this set of commands:
sudo sed -e ’s/sdapper/ edgy/g’ -i /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
The first line updates your repositories to the new ones, then we run apt-get update to update the repository cache. After that the dist-upgrade handles the rest. I think the only time I really needed to intervene was when the Flash-plugin for Firefox asked me if it was okay to download itself from the Internet. I knew it was almost done when my desktop background switched to a new one.
The first thing I noticed after the upgrade was the new look and feel. This may be a Gnome thing or perhaps just the default theme the Ubuntu Team chose, but it is very Web 2.0. For anyone wondering what that means, it is just a simple way of describing this new trend in making things look on the web. If I find any cool features in Edgy Eft, I’ll post them.
Upgrade if you haven’t!
Heroes on TV
After 5 weeks of pure goodness, my new favorite show is probably Heroes. The whole premise is just plain entertaining. It reminds me of what X-Men would be like if it were more realistic. Not everyone on the team needs to look like they just stepped out of GQ or Muscle & Fitness Magazines. It has real people discovering superhuman abilities, but also having to learn how to use them. This is very much like Spiderman in that aspect, but his abilities came overnight and via radio-active spider. Anyway, this is a great show and you should check it out on Monday nights. However, I would recommend catching the episodes in order so the story doesn’t escape you. There is a lot of character building throughout the first four episodes before the story really advances. My only fear with this show is that they drag it out way too long. Lost, my previous favorite, is starting to reach this point. Networks need good writers to write short-term masterpieces (3 seasons maximum), then shift those off to syndication to bring in residuals. This would be shows similar to Mini-Series, but with a minimum of one season and a maximum of 3 seasons. Other shows I’m digging this season:
- Prison Break - First season was put off for too long, which made way for good writing I guess. Now in the second season, the story continues to unfold and we get to see how deep the conspiracy flows.
- Studio 60 On Sunset Strip - Matthew Perry is finally showing us that he has great ensemble timing
- Nip/Tuck - (this maybe an exception since the storyline is ever changing) - This also pushes the limits of morality and the FCC everytime we watch it.
- Jericho - In its first season, this has great potential for a second season, but I don’t see it pushing much further than that. This is where I think the networks should design these to fill the larger than mini-series segment. Something sensational like a nuclear weapon going off nearby will lose its sensation after a couple of seasons.
- Lost (this is the 3rd season and it appears to be nowhere near a wrap up) - I’d hate to lose interest in what appears to be a great show.
- The O.C. (this maybe the last season - 4th is pushing my limit) - You can only watch the turmoils of the rich and pop-culture references for so long before it gets tiresome.
A Dad’s Review: The Cheetah Girls Concert
I bought two tickets for my eldest daughter’s birthday this year. She really enjoys listening to The Cheetah Girls and Hanna Montana, and fortunately for me, the concert featured both. It also featured an up-and-coming band named Everlife, which I had heard before without realizing it. Overall the concert was pretty good. Despite the generation gap of the performers and myself, the music was enjoyable. The sound engineers, however, must have had no training as the sound was horrendous. It was just enough over the comfortable limit that I started to feel guilty for subjecting my daughter to this. Maybe this is just a sign of my age, but I think the concert could have been better with someone monitoring the sound output from the stands. Everlife played about 5 songs over about 20 minutes. Miley Cyrus as Hanna Montana played 6 or 7 songs over 40 minutes. Despite the obvious presence of the background vocal track, like that used by Ashlee Simpson on SNL a couple of years ago, it was apparent that Miley was belting out her tracks. The Cheetah Girls finished the show playing for about an hour. Their performance contained a lot of choreography and simple storyline, but demonstrated talent easily obtained by years of practice and Disney promoting. Most of the songs from each performer were recognizable to anyone who has been in the room while the Disney Channel is on the tube. In fact, between performances, the side screens were utilized to promote other musicians seen on The Disney Channel. This was more proof that the Mouse will use every opportunity to promote anything. My daughter and I enjoyed the concert even after the awesomely overpriced seating options.
Ratings:
- Everlife: 3 out of 5
- Hanna Montana: 4 out of 5
- The Cheetah Girls: 4 out of 5
SuSE Desktop Installed
After hours of backing up data to DVD, I finally had the opportunity to install SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on my 64-bit machine. This install went very easy. I spent the most time dealing with the partitions because I haven’t had to deal with that in a while thanks to Ubuntu. The problem wasn’t that it was all that difficult, but that it detected a Windows install on the hard drive and wanted to work around it by default. I just went, in removed the Windows partition and realigned the other partitions. Once that was under way, I confirmed the default packages, set my time zone and left it alone for 30 minutes. At this point, I needed to confirm or modify the Hardware that was detected. It did a great job of finding everything, but it used a default driver for my ATI Radeon 7500 video card. This doesn’t affect regular use, but the default driver is not capable of 3D rendering. Essentially, Novell takes much pride in their support and the fact that they have an awesome desktop solution with this product, and they want you to subscribe to their support. I believe it is usually around $50 per year, which is not bad considering you may actually need it at some point. Upon registration of this support, the system is setup to retrieve the necessary drivers for your video card, whether it be ATI, nVidia, or Intel and your desktop with XGL is only minutes away. If you haven’t seen what this can do, you should really check it out. This is a fantastic alternative to Vista, which is still not yet released, but doesn’t have the steep hardware requirements.
Things to note about the SuSE Desktop install:
- The default install has just about everything the average user would want as far as software
- Mono, the .NET framework for linux, comes installed and already configured
- .NET apps such as Beagle, Banshee, and F-Spot are installed and ready to go.
- Firefox flash plug-ins are already installed. (this can be a bit of a hassle* with other distros)
- The ’start’/computer menu is very user friendly and a little Vista-ish.
- Desktop search via Beagle is very very impressive
*hassle: this is usually a hassle with other distributions because Firefox has a way of telling you you need the plugin, it greets you with a way to do it quickly through their interface, but with linux, this never seems to work. I’ve always had to go to adobe.com, get the installer scripts and run them manually. Granted this only take a couple of minutes, but I’m really bothered by the failed attempt on the Firefox end.
My next task is to attempt some DVD+DL burning, which always seem to fail in Windows on this particular box. I’ll also test Banshee with my iPod, although I’ve heard that it will not play non-DRM media. I find this very hard to believe, but time will tell.
Current Computer Lineup
About every six months or so I like to post my current computer lineup which is very basic information about the computers and most importantly, what operating systems I’m running on each.
Mac Mini Core Duo (2GB RAM) - Mac OS X 10.4
AMD64 3500+ (1GB RAM) - Windows XP –> soon to be SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
HP 1.4GHz (1GB RAM) - Ubuntu Linux (Dapper)
Sony VAIO Notebook (256MB RAM) - Ubuntu Linux (Dapper)
AMD 2600+ (1GB RAM) - Windows XP
This is not looking good for Microsoft. The only remaining machine with Windows on it is the one my daughters use for gaming. However, I did purchase Cedega last year, but never got past the install stage. Cedega should allow me to run all/most of their Windows games under Linux. I may try that in a couple of months. They’ll be due for a reformat of Windows by then anyway.