…to your regularly scheduled theme.
Yes, I’ve gone back to Cutline. The holidays are over. So there isn’t a need for the Iceburgg theme anymore.
I’ll look for a new theme some time in the near future.
In the mean time, you might want to check out my new Linux blog. I created it so my poor readers here didn’t have to listen to my rantings ramblings about bending Linux to my will learning Linux.
I’m in the process of testing out a rpm for BOINC. Woo hoo!
Some notes to self:
rmdir only works on empty directories. If there are files in there, you have to use rm -rrm -r on a directory that has a metric ton of files takes a very long time because it runs in interactive mode. If one is really sure one wants to get rid of the whole thing, use rm -rf.echo something > broken_soft_link_name. You must rm broken_soft_link_name first..
Watch this space for further updates…
I was looking through the search terms that brought folks to my blog. One really caught my eye. The person had searched for “linux esl game”. I thought that was really interesting. He/She didn’t find what he/she was looking for here. But it did inspire me to write this entry. And maybe the next person searching for something similar will give Edubuntu a whirl.
I had seen Edubuntu a while back. It’s a spin-off of Ubuntu. It’s aimed at teachers and students, but it would also work well in a home environment. It comes pre-packaged with educational games, the entire Open Office suite and a variety of other things. Because it’s built off of Ubuntu, it’s part of a well established community. I’ve found the Ubuntu forums to be very friendly to those just getting started and a treasure trove of information. The distro also has the advantage of frequent updates. Ubuntu and it’s derivatives work on a 6 month release cycle. The current version is 7.10, code named “Gutsy Gibbon”. Don’t you just love the code names???
The other advantage many Linux distros, including the *buntu family, have is the ability to run it off a “Live CD“. You basically just pop the CD in and reboot your computer. As long as you can boot from a CD, it will load up. It will run slower than if you actually installed it to your hard drive, but it does give you a feeling for what running a Linux distro is like.
I cut my Linux teeth on Ubuntu. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in learning more about Linux. It has excellent hardware support. I started on 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). Aside from it not supporting my weird wide screen monitor’s resolution and a WPA encrypted wireless out of the box, it ‘Just Worked’. Although I’ve upgraded my install to 7.10, I haven’t played around with it much, so I’m not even sure if those minor issues have been resolved. I’m quite happy with Fedora 7 and I only keep Ubuntu around for fun or when I want to see the differences between a Debian based distro (which Ubuntu is) and a Red Hat based distro (which Fedora is). In all honesty, it might be perfectly realistic not to ever touch the command line (aka “the shell”) using a member of the *buntu family. I won’t lie, the shell can be more than a little intimidating. But for some things, it’s much quicker than pointing and clicking through a zillion menus. And let’s face it, kids are flexible. Using the shell is very much like speaking another language. Kids are wired to learn. They absorb new stuff like little sponges. That’s not to say an adult can’t do it. I’m certainly making headway.
I’ll leave you with a few screen shots of Edubuntu. Click the pictures for a full size version.
The Desktop
Nautilus File Browser
GCompris Math
It’s no secret I’m actively involved with BOINC. I’ve learned a lot about computers from running their software and helping out in the various project forums. It was one of the project administrators that so kindly helped me get Linux up and running on my computer (current uptime 15 days, 10:07 and still going strong). Because running BOINC tends to stress your system, I was looking for a lightweight monitor for things like memory usage and temperatures. I know all about top to get processor/memory usage, but having nice little program with everything in the same place is preferable. So I found Conky.
If I had Debian or Gentoo or just about any other Linux distro, I would have been free and clear because there are pre-compiled packages. But of course there wasn’t an rpm for it (I use Fedora 7).
Compiling from source was supposed to be as easy as configure, make, make install. Note the use of the term “was supposed to be”. I guess if I actually had my system set up as a development box (and I actually knew slightly more than nothing) it would have been easy. My experience with compiling from source was limited to mplayer and that basically just worked (once I got g++ installed).
I knew I was going to need the X11 development libraries so I installed those. I bravely opened up the terminal (actually I’ve gotten quite comfortable with it) and unpacked the source archive. I changed over to that directory and told it to go do the configure. I watched it churn away and spit out an error. Grumble grumble grumble. This was a few weeks ago. I asked a friend for help, but he wasn’t familiar with the libs. I Googled. No joy. Nothing looked relevant and what I read went so far over my head that I needed binoculars to see it. I posted on the Conky forums, but no response. So I put the whole project on the back burner for a few weeks.
I was bored this morning and decided to see if anyone on the BOINC forums might know where I needed to go from where I was. Within thirty minutes I had a response. Thank you Trog Dog! Just by seeing what I needed to install I also saw how to read the error message. So I installed what I needed and ran configure again. Another error. So I downloaded and installed some more developer stuff. Later, rinse, repeat about three more times. And then the configure succeeded. Yippee!
Make and install went flawlessly. I ran the program. And BINGO! I now have Conky on my desktop.
Now I have some reading to do on how to best configure Conky for my use. What is shown in the picture is the default configuration. But after getting it compiled I needed to go and finish my grocery shopping. So that little project will have to wait for another day.
GRUB has been whipped into submission. I now have a fully functional, triple booting laptop.
It was hard getting to this point. Typos are the worst. But I found one on my own and my tutor found the other one.
For the curious, my grub.conf looks like this. I removed my name for privacy.
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Modified by KatieSue
# August 27, 2007
# To triple boot Vista, Ubuntu 7.04 and Fedora Core 7 (Quiet and Verbose)
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda6
# initrd /boot/initrd- version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=30
splashimage=(hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core 7 – QUIET
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img
title Fedora Core 7 – VERBOSE
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz- 2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img
title Ubuntu 7.04 – QUIET
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic ro root=/dev/sda5 quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img- 2.6.20-15-generic
title Ubuntu 7.04 – VERBOSE
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic ro root=/dev/sda5
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
I wasn’t happy with just having my laptop dual booting between Ubuntu and Vista. Nah. I had given up on the XP/Vista/Ubuntu triple boot idea mostly because the XP Pro CD I have doesn’t have the right drivers for my SCSI hard drive.
In working through the terminal stuff with Eric, he sort of turned me onto the idea of trying Fedora Core. So we came up with a partitioning scheme that will allow me to triple boot among Vista, Ubuntu and Fedora Core 7.
The partitioning was the easy part. Once I remembered that I had to reboot after wiping out the last three of the four partitions I already had setup, it went flawlessly.
For the curious, my partition table looks like
/dev/sda1 — Vista
/dev/sda2 — Shared data
/dev/sda3 — Swap
/dev/sda4 — An extended partition containing…
/dev/sda5 — Ubuntu 7.04
/dev/sda6 — Fedora Core 7
/dev/sda7 — /home
/dev/sda8 — /tmp
So now I’m at the point where I’m ready to scream. My first attempt was a failure. I didn’t pay attention to the GRUB (bootloader) screens when I installed Fedora so I ended up not being able to boot into Ubuntu. Thankfully I was still able to get into Windows.
After consulting with Eric, I decided the easiest thing to do was reinstall Fedora and add Ubuntu into GRUB. So I did that.
Failure again. Although I now have the option of booting into Ubuntu, I still can’t because it throws an error at me. But again, at least I can still get into Windows.
So now I’m off to try to mount my Ubuntu partition in Fedora through some CLI magic (and it really is magic to me) and then find the names of vmlinux and initrd (whatever those might be).
Thank goodness it was a rainy weekend. I don’t feel so bad for sitting in front of the computer all day for two days.
I have been planning on triple booting (Vista Home Premium/XP Professional/Ubuntu Feisty Fawn) my laptop for quite a while. I started the process about 6 weeks ago. I managed to get the hard drive partitioned before I left for Korea. That process only took about 2 hours or so. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but it was probably something stupid. By the time I reinstalled Vista, I was so frustrated that I knew Ubuntu was going to have to wait for another day. And XP is going to have to wait just a bit longer as well. I’m waiting on my brother to slipstream me a new install CD as the one I had doesn’t have the drivers for my SATA controller.
So yesterday was the day to install Ubuntu. I pulled out the tutorial I found online and popped in the installer CD I burned. The install was truly one of the quickest and least painful ones I’ve ever done. The only problem I had to solve was a silly one. All I needed to do was right click the ext3 partition to specify it as the mount point (errr… at least I think that’s what it was called).
One reboot at the end of the install and I was up and running. First thing I did was install all of the updates and then started trying to break it. My first project was to get BOINC installed. I was following a forum thread that another cruncher wrote and managed to screw it up at least twice. I did learn that Google and “man” are indeed your friends. But in the end I did get it up and running.
I got Firefox and OpenOffice up and running and set-up just the way I like them. I installed Flash and Java so I can see all the nifty things on the web. I half figured out the problem I was having with RhythmBox. What I did should have solved the entire problem, but hasn’t. So I’ve Googled and also posted on a message board for help from a Linux guru as my Google skills seem to be failing me.
So all in all, I think I did fairly well for a weekend’s worth of work. I have a shiny new OS to play with. I learned some new things. And I got myself out of jams all by myself (even if the terminal still scares me).
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