Tag: Ubuntu

From Netbook Blues To Happy News

On By WinstonIn Personal, TechnologyLeave a comment

If you read this regularly, you may recall that I’ve adopted my daughters orphan net-book. Windows Vista was dead slow on it (go figure), so I installed Ubuntu Linux as a dual boot. After some tweaking and poking, I convinced it to do most of what I wanted. Mind you, part of that success depends on understanding that it’s not going to do everything my daughters new quad core notebook does (again, go figure). Among other things, it’s never going to transcode video. Trust me on this.

Short version: It worked like a charm, until it didn’t. That is a phrase that can be applied to so many things, isn’t it. In this case, I knew exactly what had happened, I just had no idea how to fix it.

The problem, as is so often the case, was of my own invention. I was at my trailer and decided to install an application across their very erratic wi-fi. Signal drops, install crashes, I’m left with some partially rewritten config files and a pile of error messages. Ubuntu is not Windows. Thank the Geek Gods for that. Despite this colossal blunder, Ubuntu still works. I can do anything I want to except install things.

That’s not so bad. How often do I really need to install things anyway? Turns out, the answer is: More often than you think. Especially if you plan better after your mistakes. Let me explain how that works for me.

Because I was becoming unemployed, Lynn and I decided to spend some time at the trailer before the season ends. Since my net-book doesn’t have a dvd drive, I decided to rip Battlestar Galactica to digital format to take with me. I spent all that time getting the thing to play video, I may as well enjoy it right? I rip the first disc, test it out and decide it looks terrible. But it plays, so I know I’ve got the right format, codec, etc. I increase the quality and rip the next three discs before we leave.

Now I’m at my trailer unemployed and planning to enjoy some BSG. They won’t play. The increased quality and resulting filesize is apparently more than my little net-book can handle. This is the better planning part: test the new settings before ripping three more discs. Hindsight as they say is always 20/20.

No problem I think, I’ll just go online and download a transcoder and fix that. Except of course, I can’t install any new software because of the previous issue. That’s just inconvenient. So I grab Lynn’s laptop, download DivX and start transcoding things. Turns out, it’s not going to finish anytime this week. She might want to use her laptop before then so I cancel the job. But I still want to watch BSG.

That leaves me with two problems. The same ones I had before. Ubuntu won’t play my huge video files, and I can’t download any kind of fix for it. So I do what I always do and ask Google. I copy and paste the error message and run my search. Then I do it again and then I start to get grumpy. Turns out none of the answers I found covered my particular problems. So I opened up my braincase, rummaged around in the dus ty, unused part labeled “Figure It Out Yourself”, and set to work.

Four and a half hours, two cups of tea, one diet coke and some truly creative profanity later: Success! I am now able to install software again. That allowed me to install the xfce window manager. It is very simple, and so less resource hungry. I also installed the Kaffeine video player which is again smaller footprint. Between them, I am now able to watch BSG without having to wait until I get home to redo them all. YAY!

And that folks, is how you go from Netbook Blues To Happy News.

Cheers, Winston

Netbook Blues Are A Boon For Me

On By WinstonIn Personal, TechnologyLeave a comment

A couple of years ago, we bought our daughter a netbook to use for school.  She was thrilled and happy as a clam… for about a month.  Just long enough that we couldn’t return it.  It seems she might have been mistaken in what she needed from her portable computer.  As well as running office apps to use for school, it suddenly needed to stream video, play Facebook games etc.  It was never made for those things so of course she wasn’t happy with it.  She managed to tough it out until now.

For her recent eighteenth birthday, we bought her a new notebook.  It’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and if it goes over any building, it’ll go poorly for her.  Short version, I inherited her netbook.

Now it’s pretty common knowledge that netbooks are underpowered.  Really, that’s sort of the point.  If you want a full power laptop, buy a notebook not a netbook.  On the other hand, this one has issues even by netbook standards.  The processor was bit slower than others at it’s price point, but it was a trade off for other perks.  When all the competition had 1gb of ram and 160gb hard drive, this one had 2gb of ram and a 250gb drive.  It also has an 11.6 inch display as opposed to the usual 10 inch,

As with any tech toy, it’s all about what you expect from it.  I don’t stream video or play Facebook games on the netbook.  I am using it to write this post.  I use it to surf news sites to figure out what I want to write about.  And even those things are a little clunky on this laptop.  Or at least they were.

I did some research and discovered the problem.  It’s actually one of the most ubiquitous problems in the computer world.  No, it’s not a virus.  It’s Windows Vista.  It turns out it’s a little resource hungry for this poor little thing.  On the other hand, there are apparently several Linux distributions optimized for netbooks.  I’ve used Linux before and have a current version on my desktop downstairs.  So I figured, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Normally, that’s a question I try to avoid because I never really like the answer.  In this case, it wasn’t a problem.  I was going to install the Ubuntu Netbook Edition.  Yeah, that apparently doesn’t exist anymore, but that’s okay.  I’m not that picky.  Netbook Edition, Desktop Edition, whatever.  So I go ahead and install it anyway.

More accurately, I spent a fair bit of time trying to guess the secret of the setup instructions.  Then I spent more time swearing and attempting to guess the secret of the setup instructions.  After a fair number of guesses and a much larger number of words which I’m not about to repeat here, I got it to install.  There was much cheering and rejoicing, very quietly because by then it was 4:30am.

Because I installed the FULL Desktop Edition I sort of expected it to be as slow as Vista was.  Thanks to the God of all Geeks, it’s not.  In fact, it’s really responsive.  If I was typing this on the Vista side, I’d have a huge problem with lag.  When I typed last night’s post, I could literally type an entire sentence before it showed up on the screen.  On this shiny new Linux build, there’s barely a trace of it remaining.  It’s quicker loading web pages.  It doesn’t really care how many tabs I have open, it just goes ahead and does what it’s supposed to.

Now before everyone with a netbook clicks away to download Linux and speed things up, here’s what you need to know.  Unless you know at least a little bit about Linux, it’s not going to be as rewarding as you hope.  It wasn’t until after I installed it that I was reminded of just how many little things you need to know.  A software package I wanted to install couldn’t get some of the files it needed.  So I had to open a terminal window and type something like “sudko apt-get install whatever it was called”.

I’m not telling you not to do it, just be prepared.  Remember, Google is your friend.  The secret is, you have to know enough about what you’re doing to as the right question.  If you can do that, it should be okay.  Maybe.  If not, don’t use the comment section to ask for tech support.  I won’t respond.  No matter how much entertainment you have provided me with.

Cheers, Winston