mike the mountain

I’m trying to stay on top of a few basic tricks with GIMP… hoping to be able to play around a little more once we finally get a decent camera and start really shooting!

So far I’ve been able to copy and paste every command I’ve needed to enter into the terminal via detailed online tutorials. But it would be nice to actually grasp what the heck I’ve been doing for the last while.

Still not quite 100% with Ubuntu. I tried watching a fullscreen video a couple days ago, kept freezing up, dropping frames, etc., on a vid that plays fine on my 4 year old iBook. Something ain’t right. Also, had to hard-reset after it locked up while totally idle except for a basic screensaver. Hmm.

I’m amazingly more tolerant of minor bugs when they come with a system offered freely and supported passionately, as opposed to one that charges stupidly and treats me like a criminal. I’m willing to invest the effort to get this to work.

Hey, if I wanted something that just worked out of the box, I’d have got another Mac.

Actually, I tried to get another Mac, just couldn’t justify the finances when I added in the price of a full version of Windows to run all my biz software.

Point is, Linux, even a flavour as refined as Ubuntu, does not work straight “out of the box”, especially on a new generation laptop. Takes a bit of effort, but I’m hoping it will be worth it.

HUGE thanks to everyone linked below for their help in getting me set up and rocking. She’s looking better all the time, no major glitches, response is fantastic (finally feels like a new computer!).

I’m just waiting for the first client to recognize what I’m running… guaranteed sale!

• The “Perfect Install” on an HP Pavilion dv9000
• Official HP dv9000 Laptop Thread – ubuntu forums
• Ubuntu Guide: Feisty
• You Can Switch To Linux! maximumpc
• How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first)
• 13 Must Do things on new Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn installation
• Ten tips for new Ubuntu users
• Essentials, 2006 edition
• Lifehacker – Top 10 Ubuntu applications
• 17 Must-Have Free Apps for New Ubuntu Users
• Hack Attack: Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks
• IEs 4 Linux
• How To: Print to PDF in Ubuntu

I am writing this post from my brand new install of Ubuntu 7.04 (aka: Fiesty Fawn) on my HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop (aka: work computer).

Came with Vista… hate it.
Dual-boot installed XP for legacy industry software… still hate it.

Sick of the crashes, freezes, stupidly slow response times to the most basic requests.

Been reading about this Ubuntu monster for long enough, time to finally give it a try.

Triple-booting at the moment, in case I cant get my biz stuff to run in virtualization (WINE, VMWare, etc.).

Had a minor issue with the LiveCD install route, found a solution in a very detailed and excellent forum (that I will link too as soon as I get back on the Vista side to recover my bookmarks)(here it is!), but other than that everything seems to be running ok!

Except for some reason, just now, I started having problems with my -quote- key. When I press it, I get nothing, then a system beep when I hit any other key afterwards. Must be something to do with my keyboard settings… being from Canada I often find software trying to force a French-Canadian or International keyboard layout of some kind. No worries, the key thing about linux is the will of the user to find the answer.

Wow, an operating system that doesn´t think it´s smarter than me!

…

I just figured it out… I have to hit the -´- key twice, otherwise it´s set up to accent certain letters for French spelling (é, ó, ć…). Just have to change the keyboard layout to US instead of French-Canadian.

I AM THE SMART!! S-M-R-T!!

I´ll keep you up to date on how my Ubuntu adventures progress in an actual work environment… I can´t freakin´ wait!!!

I know I keep saying that I’m going to get Linux loaded up one of these days… I really do want to. I’ve heard that getting Ubuntu on my iBook isn’t going to be as simple as I would have hoped (older hardware), and I just haven’t taken the time to backup my work comp and give her a try yet (had enough headaches just getting XP and Vista to play nice together). But, I’m still collecting everything I can for when I do finally take a weekend and rock that penguin!