All Gigged Up and Nowhere To Go...

This is frustrating. Over the last 2 weeks, I have been trying to get a hold of an Athlon 64 processor for my upgrade. There aren't any. Boards they have a lot of, but no AM2 Athlons. The first time I went around, I got a sense of what I could buy. I was looking for one of those energy efficient Semprons that run on 35W. They did not have any on stock. They had the regular ones. For each of the 2 shops I went to, they had one piece each of a Sempron 3000+ (with 256 L2 cache) and a Sempron 3200+ (with a 128 L2 cache). Both crunched numbers at a whopping 62W, same as the Athlon 64's. So thinking I wouldn't be saving on the power consumption, I decided to go with an Athlon 3000+, which had double the L2 cache of the Sempron 3000+ and built-in support for virtualization. Alas, none can be found. Shop owner 1 promised he'd have one delivered to him last Friday, but I went there and he said there was a delay since the distributors called an early holiday for their employees. Shop owner 2 on the other was a bit more chatty so I went ahead and explained my predicament, saying I needed an enery efficient Sempron with the Athlon as a second choice. He was very afront about AMD though. He apologized (he must've sensed I was an AMD fanboy by the way I threw around all those acronyms) and said that "to be honest, disadvantage po sa amin ang mag-stock ng AMD kase hindi steady ang upgrade plans nila, 'di tulad ng Intel na iisa lang ang socket para sa last-generation 32-bit hangang sa mga dual-core na 64-bit." Sadly, he has a point.

So, where am I today? I bought a Gig of RAM from shop owner 2. They sold me a Kingston KVR533D2N4 stick for only 5,100. Great price! Unfortunately, its the only piece I have. I really do not want to go the Intel way (a matter of presonal preference). However, if I don't get anywhere in the next week or so, I'll be forced to look at an Intel proc and motherboard just to see what my options are. Budget-wise though, an AMD is my best option.

Foot In The Door

I've been meaning to get an upgrade going this year but that had to take a backseat because of the construction work we had to do on our recently acquired house. By a fortunate twist of events a few of my friends are in need Socket A parts that I have in my machine. One officemate was convincing me to sell my motherboard to him, as his Asus motherboard just kicked the bucket. Another friend is asking for my processor and RAM so he can finally get his aging Duron system a boost.

I've been mulling over gutting my machine and doing what I call a foot-in-the-door upgrade. See with quadcore chips just barely out the door, the prices of 64-bit single core chips have gone down that the slowest Athlon 64 is now at a price point where its equal to the money I forked out for my Sempron 2400+ some 2 1/2 years ago. If I buy an AM2 board, my upgrade path is secure. I get the parts I need at a not-so-premium price and I can upgrade to dual-core several months after and quadcore further down the road.

If I sell my parts, I'll probably raise around 5,000 pesos. Now to get a Gigabyte Socket AM2 board with integrated graphics (I'm no gamer anyway), an Athlon 64 3000+ and a Gig of DDR2 memory I'd have to raise 13,000. I've already sold a Palm handheld I've been holding on to just to get a little bit more cash, but I don't think I can get more to get this upgrade going. I'm already looking at other options, like selling my phone cheap. I have around 20 comic books gathering dust in my closet that I don't know the value of. I was told some of them were rare ones. I've asked another officemate I'd give him any one of the titles if he sells the rest. Rumaging the closest yielded no other items that I could sell though. ~sigh

I'm still undecided at this point.

Micro$oft and Novell

I heard about this news from several podcasts and not everyone seems to agree on what this deal specifically means. Some say Novell was trying to weasel out and indemnify itself from possible lawsuits from M$, and if that's true they just violated the GPL. Others say, its simply a deal to increase marketing between both companies as M$ is planning on marketing its server products with vitualization capabilities. Bundling a Linux flavor together with that does make sense. But once lawsuits go out against Red Hat users, then we'll know for sure what this deal really represents. I say we as a community should withdraw support for Novell and still support Suse until everything becomes clearer. Damn, Novell should've kept its greedy hands off of Suse in the first place.

AMD Does It Again

In the wake of Intel's launch of their quad core processors, beating AMD to the race by about six months, AMD comes up with its own trump card for the enterprise market that blew analysts away. AMD is now selling what it calls Stream Processors. After reading these two articles on CMP's Information Week and TrustedReviews.com, I realized it was ironic that this was such a simple concept but no one thought about bringing this to the market earlier. I was just amazed at the foresight that they had when they decided to buy ATI. And being the AMD fan that I am, I just glad they did buy ATI, even though my heart says nVidia :-(

Shocking News...

Microsoft Firefox

This had me in a laughing fit for a few minutes!

Accelerating Downloads

I usually have trouble remembering the itsy bits and pieces that I have to make up the jumble of stuff that eventually becomes my system. For posterity's sake and for the sanity of my memory, here goes...

There are times that WGet doesn't really do it for me. For one, I think there are servers that refuse to accept multiple connections from WGet. So to replace WGet, I have two favorites to squeeze all that bandwidth out of my connection. Para sulit naman ang monthly fee ko, 'di ba?

One is Axel, which is just a "sudo apt-get install axel" away from any terminal emulator. Advantages are its size and that it doesn't break up downloads into the pieces (and joins them, post-download) like most every accelerator out there does. Axel puts all the data into a single file, pieces of the puzzle written in the right order and on-the-fly at download time. And it is a very small program too. I think I've read someone say, he puts it in a floppy and just executes it on several linux PCs he uses. A plus if you're using a low-resource PC. The other accelerator I use is Prozilla. I've had trouble with this before but I still use it. Its still a favorite, owing to the fact that I get to see the progress of each part of the download and the speed of each of the 4 (default) connections. Its a pet peeve. Don't ask. You can get Prozilla by going to http://packages.debian.org/oldstable/net/prozilla for the stable deb package, currently version 1.3.6. There are newer versions you can compile from tar (download those from here), the latest of which is 2.0.4, but I've had the most stable experience with the 1.3.6.

Both acceelerators support downloading the same file from different mirrors, so you don't make the life of some poor network admin out there a living hell by overburdening one his server. Hey, bandwidth is money! So my parting shot would be to use one (or both!) and use those mirrors. Let's make everyone happy, even the guys who sit behind the servers that churn out all the open source goodness that we so treasure :-)

Next up, Aria2!

Haiku (well, sort of...)

torrenting

makes me yearn for more

bandwidth than I can spare...

Wordpress?

I've been considering moving over this blog to Wordpress. It seems a lot more sophisticated and flexible than what I currently use in Blogger. And its an itch I need to scratch. I'm curious about Wordpress and I just want to try it.

I'm worried though that I might loose my archived content when I move my blog over there. Wordpress' "Importing" FAQ does assuage my worries, but one can never tell what unfortunate things might happen when experimenting.

On a lighter note, I've installed Edgy now and I'm currently updating. I couldn't download the ISO for Ubuntu as the servers were busy at the time I started to download. I checked on the servers hosting Edubuntu and I saw that the speed was better, even though there were only 2 mirrors in close proximity to the Philippines. I ended up downloading that and installed it today. No worries, though. I actually like Edubuntu's defaults. Next on my list, getting everything up-to-date, including my plugins :-)

Optimistic...

Here's to another nail in the coffin... Microsoft Could Learn a Thing or Two From Ubuntu. Well, sorta. If only more and more analysts and business people see it the way consumers do. Or if only more consumers were better informed. Ah! The fight goes on...

Apologies...

My apologies to all the followers of Ubuntu PH's planet. I was unaware that moving my Blogger account over to its beta would republish everything and basically spam my Feedburner RSS feed.That'll be the last time I leap before I look...

Back!

I'm back...

At last!!! I have a connection at home again! I have cable internet now. Eventhough the speed isn't as consistent, I'm quite happy. I have a subscription for 384 kbps. I haven't been able to max it out. I hover more around 280, but that's okay, since I happen to think this is inherently more secure than Smart Wifi (now called Smart Bro).

Used to use Shields Up to scan my Smart connection. It would always fail on several ports and that alarmed me. I also used Shields Up on my mother-in-law's Smart connection and the same ports were failing the port scanning test. Thing is she has a software firewall and a hardware firewall through her broadband router. My current connection passed the Shields Up test (see screenshot below), so I think I'm better off now.


Off the bat, torrenting worked quite well. No problems with NAT traversal and all that stuff. I'm currently seeding only one ISO image (FreeBSD's 6.1 DVD compilation - listed here: http://torrents.freebsd.org:8080/) since I need to bandwidth more for downloading other stuff. FDM 2.1 (Free Download Manager) works pretty well with this connection as well. No problems whatsoever. FDM's able to max out the connection to 45KB/s speed at certain times of the day.

Next up in my list of To Do's... Update all of my installers to newer version and back-up all my data. I really need to scratch my VMWare itch. If all goes well, by next weekend I'll be installing Ubuntu and using VMWare Server to test out Windoze and Bayanihan Linux (currently in Beta2). There are a lot of Beta software that I'm testing under XP. It's fun to watch them break the system under a controlled environment.

I took a little time off blogging because I just couldn't handle my sched. For several weeks, I would go to our little renovation project we had going over at the new house we were moving into. And then at the same time, I was working on getting promoted. Well, mission accomplished! It's been well over 2 weeks since I got promoted and almost 2 weeks since we moved in. All I need now is an internet connection at home. Sadly, none is available at this time. I gave up on SMART Wifi. It felt good to cancel the darned thing. I just got fed up. I'm waiting for the cable company to roll in those new lines into our subdivision. There are about 300 or so homes already built in our subdivision but barely 50 are occupied. Not everyone is as anxious to move in yet. So, we'll have to wait for cable and phone lines to come into our area. They're probably just waiting for enough customers to connect to justify the cost of rolling out lines. Well, from here on in I'll have to play the waiting game. Hmmm...reminds me. I need to buy a thumb drive for all those packages I need to download! I better bug the missus for a little spending money.

Busy...

Been working on...stuff. Well, stuff at work. I'm not allowed to say. Or at least my conscience tells me. Then there's stuff at home, mostly sleeping during the day to keep awake at night. I'm being the reclusive hermit again. Then, I had to reformat the PC, yet again. I'm still OC about some things. I'm trying to clean up my music collection so they display uniform info tags.

And I'm reading again! Something I haven't done in ages. All this internet stuff has distracted me from the beautiful experience that is reading books! Real books! On paper! Currently enjoying: Stainless Longganisa by Bob Ong

Somethin' fun, for a change...

Funny little show for G.W. bashers:

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

If he gets stuck, pull him into an open space. If you do it right, he'll free fall for a few minutes.

Spiffy Dapper

Well, I finally finished updating Dapper several days ago after my Smart Wifi connection stared working again (finally!). I download all the updates and then some. Ubuntu Guide was an immense help as usual. I can never go without it. I find this newer iteration better, since its updated more frequently now.

And if you'll indulge me, here's a look at my new desktop:



I used the Sphere Crystal theme with the Amaranth window border and Nuvola icons. I think those come with the gnome-themes-extras package. The wall paper is Minimalistic Black and White (Author: Knives) from PixelGirlPresents.Com. Sweet! I think I may have gone theme-crazy because I also ended up downloading 12 other GDM themes too. Heheee...

Dapper's Still Waiting...

It's been a week after I installed Dapper. I haven't had the chance to update the darned thing. And my Smart connection's been crappy this past month. No broadband for me. I already sold my dialup modem, so no go on that front either. Plus A few personal issues have doused my techno-lust. It's going to be ho-humm for this blog for a while...

Dapper Blunder

Long story short... I used the Espresso from the Dapper Beta LiveCD. I was impressed by how easy it was. However, it did not overwrite my existing Grub file, so I couldn't boot into the new install. I was too lazy (and sleepy) to fiddle around with it. I refreshed the old one and am now going the "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" route. Almost three excruciating hours more to go.



I need more sleep. Sleep deprivation is affecting my decision-making abilities. I think I'll doze off while this thing's churning...

Dapper Beta

I'm almost done downloading Dapper's new beta. It's taking me while. Since the summer started, I've been getting less than satifactory connections from Smart Wifi (yea! its their fault again!). Either no connection for the whole day, or a very slow one for most of the day. Today was better, so the download is almost as good as roasted. I can smell the azo already. I can't wait to try out Espresso. Interesting the note the differences between each of the installs from Flight 3 through Beta. Of course, that would be something that would only interest a die-hard Ubuntista. Viva Ubuntu! Hasta La Victoria, Para Siempre! LOL..

I really do go through the process of downloading the ISOs an installing over and over again. This is so I could gain the experience and share it with other people. This learning experience actually helps me give better advice to people I'm convincing to use Ubuntu. Its quite tedious, but it gives me a satisfied feeling whenever I start saying "From my experience.." and then blurt out the rest of the story to friends. :-]

Fan Meets Karaniwang Tao

Posted some pics on my entry about meeting Joey Ayala. Its on my personal blog. You can click here to get there, but most of the pics are on my Flickr page.

Hoping...

Read Diane's post that someone was sending here these "Powered by Ubuntu" laptop stickers. Couldn't resist. Had to ask her for one! I do realize that getting a request like that from a random stranger may freak out some people. But in blogosphere, strangers are your comrades. They read your rants and give you hope. They relate to your feelings or relent at your words. They sometimes rant back and occassionaly you get a few painfully-worded criticisms. It's all part of what we deal with as bloggers. As I always say, blogging is my therapy. So if I get grief over what I write, well I just have to take it.

Veering off course again. Going back to the original topic, I hope she does give me one. :-)

Hot, Hot, Hot!

Boy, is it hot! Im having a hard time trying to sleep during the afternoons. Even my PC is complaining. Recently my processor's temp has been averaging 58ºC. I've even had to shut my PC down in the middle of stuff because the power supply temp would shoot over 70ºC. But hey, who am I to complain? I've got a stock CPU cooler and the el cheapo PSU came with the case. It was the cheapest option I had.

And about that upgrade, I've decided to hold off until next year. I thought it prudent to just plan for minor upgrades on this machine, like the long-delayed most postponed upgrade I've been meaning to have -- a better CPU cooler. Maybe throw in a new power supply with dual-fans for better cooling. 512MB of RAM would help too. Ultimate upgrade before the end of the year? A 17-inch LCD monitor! Heck, I'll splurge on a 19-inch one if the prices come down low enough!

But before I get carried away, though... I need to turn off my PC. You know.

Hardware

I've been mulling ubout upgrading for a weeks now. It all started before my birthday. The Core Duo Minis just came out, I've been a Mac fan for years now but have given up that dream to follow less costlier solutions to personal computing. The Minis are priced a bit better than the rest of the Macs, but they're still more expensive than most PCs. One of the few reasons I would really like to have a Mac is because it runs software we use at work. Not that I bring work home, but it would really be much less of a hassle if I could run it from home when I need to. Sadly, that little piece of proprietary software will never run in an open source OS like Linux.

Another reason is space. We're moving to a smaller house in two or three months and this hulking tower of mine will be ill-placed anywhere within the confines of our new home. A Mini would be such a relief to use, especially so that you could use it as a media center of sorts. It has a remote for crying out loud -- LOL! The media center angle is another point I could use to convince the wife.

While it would be wonderful to own a Mini, I could get an equally-priced 64-bit SFF PC for the same price. A little bigger in size but it would be more powerful. Especially now that there's an SFF solution for DYIers like the Focus Nemesis available locally. You can really customize your PC with the specs you want. Small cases used to be available only with motherboards from the same manufacturer (Shuttle & Aopen). Now I have a choice. I can put anything I want in it. Maybe match that case with a micro-ATX motherboard like the Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 and an Athlon 64 3200+ and you've got one good combination. Give it about 1GB of RAM and a 120GB SATA drive, and you've got zippy performance all the way through. I figure that would be the best way to go since it strikes a good balance between cost, performance and upgradability. You won't get all three when you buy Macs.

There are a few reasons though why my sane rational mind is telling me to hold back on that upgrade. One would be EFI. Everything on the PC side is still based on the twenty-something year-old BIOS. Macs already have EFI. The main advantage of EFI is that hardware drivers work outside of the Operating System. Dual-booting machines would have the same drivers whatever the OS, as long as both already support EFI. Another reason is AM2. AMD is finally moving its memory controller off its chip and will finally support DDR2. Before reading this article, I was racking my brain thinking about why there aren't any DDR2 boards coming out for the AMD platform. Well now I know why. Think looooonger long-term upgrade paths, my friend.

All this thinking is making head hurt. Maybe I should just throw caution to the wind and get one of these tiny things.

Hardsell

This is one painful way to get Linux to work in a Mac Mini... http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp

Gotta Luv Da Fox

After I installed Dapper Flight 6, I tried a few Firefox browser addons. Before this, I was actually contemplating switching over to Opera. It was faster and lighter on RAM, but that was it. The choice of browser still relies heavily on the user experience. It almost always comes down to that. That being said, I still prefer Firefox. Especially after I tried a few of the plugins, a couple of extensions and themes.

For the extensions I downloaded FasterFox and FlashGot. FasterFox tweaks your default settings and basically makes the Fox faster, sans the cheezy icon. FlashGot is basically a bridge between your choice of download accelerator and Firefox. It worked pretty well with GWGET and will work with cURL, Downloader 4 X and KDE KGet, though I didn't not try them all just yet. I will eventually. Dave actually favors Downloader 4 X. Linux is all about choices :-)

I also added themes onto Firefox and was happy that they worked on Ubuntu (of course!). These are some of my favorites: iFox, Metal Lion, iPox, Breeze, and ColorGnome. Gnome addicts will love the Gnome-fx series most of all.

I'll be sticking to Firefox for a while for all of these little addons. And mostly because I was a fan of its grandaddy Netscape. Or is it father??? Oh well, maybe one of these days I'll try the Firefox descendant called Flock. Ah, the beauty of Open Source!

PEBKAC

This is hilarious! Why is it people in power usually resort to angry threats at the slightest provocation? They take the opportunity to name-drop their apparent political clout and ties to national (federal, in this case) agencies to try and scare everyone else shitless. I can't blame the guy, though. Lots of horror stories in Windows. Maybe his 22 years of experience in "computer systems engineering" told him he should give hell at the person who caused the webpage error. It just so happened that in the process of venting he successfully made an ass of himself running his mouth off.

Welcome News

Now, here's a welcome piece of news: PalmSource Unveils New Linux-Based Palm OS . The question is if it will survive. I hope it does. I really hope it does.

Where do we turn to then?

My wife found this article at INQ7.net: When Filipino tech consumer complaints fall on deaf ears. If the Telecom industry is deregulated then where do consumers turn to when they are being abused?

I have personally seen how bad customer service gets at Smart WiFi. I've been a long-time Smart and PLDT subscriber. I've had no major complaints before Smart WiFi, except for a small billing error in my PLDT bill a few years back. Overall, I'd say the level of customer service was acceptable. That is until I got Smart WiFi.

I had mine installed September 30. That was quick, considering I applied for it a week earlier. Good times wouldn't last though. The next day, my connection unexplicably died. I sent an SMS to the service contractor. He went back and replaced the antenna and POE. That solved the problem in the meantime. October 13 to December 1, I could not connect. My connection was live,but I was unable to load any webpages. After several calls, I got a schedule for a field visit by tech support. The person who came by took one look at my monitor and immediately deduced that my computer was the problem. He only asked one question. He asked if I was using an OS other than Windows. I showed him what I was currently running -- Ubuntu. Then that was it. He left.

Took me another 4 weeks, 2 very irate calls to supervisors and several threats to cancel before I got another schedule. The new field support guys came by and replaced the damned equipment (antenna, cable, POE). The connection worked. That was December 1. From time to time I still get low speeds and typical whole day outages.

My threats to cancel were met with statements that I had to pay for the rest of the year if I cancelled. That made me feel bad. I was being shortchanged and I had to suffer more for it??? I'm really just trying to finish the year and then I'm cancelling my subscription. Overall, Smart's WiFi has been a bad experience. Six weeks and I did not even get an apology. I got a rebate but that was limited to the number of days without a connection. No free time for the inconvenience, no apology email, no nothing. I was even threatened with pre-termination charges when I called to cancel. I mean where do we go when we're being threatened with large pre-termination charges to scare us into submission? I mean aren't breachs of contract a two-way thing? If consumers have pay for pre-termination, then telecoms should pay for severe lapses in their services. Consumers like me are only asking for fair treatment and way to have our issues addressed. So here goes my question again. Where do consumers go when they're being abused?

Kanotix

Since I started Linux, I've wanted to try as many distros as I can. That is one of the freedoms that Linux users really enjoy. Freedom of choice. Now there's this analogy people like to use, saying distros are like ice cream flavors. Each one different and unique in their own way yet all are equally yummy to try. And I want to try a lot of different flavors, so that ice cream analogy really applies to me.

And since there are 400 "flavors", I usually limit myself to the top 20 and a few other specialty distributions. That's because I enjoy the support and help I get from the large communities that usually come with the more popular distros. For an idea of how popular specific distros are, check out Distrowatch.com's counter.

I'm currently downloading Kanotix a live cd just as famous as Knoppix when it comes to hardware compatibility. Its still Debian so it won't be that alien to me. If I like it that much, I might even install it. Wish me luck :-]

Dichotomy

A friend and I were talking about how there are purists in just about any group you can think about. That got me thinking. He was right. Even in the mainstream leftist movement of my student days, there were those who always thought they were above everybody else. Except to the higher ups, that is.

Well the open source movement is no exception, I guess. For the linux movement in particular, there are those who are in it for the code and those who are in it for the cause. Those who are technically adept use linux because of the challenge that it presents. Altruistic, many are. Yet there are those that feel they should be held above the rest of the general populace because of their technical adeptness. There is within this group an equally tenacious inner circle of thinkers that shun all that does not conform to their way of thinking, so called purists. They are only open to developments that conform to their mode of thought and nothing else. They also have a propensity to scoff at everybody they think is below their level of skill.

Then there are those who use Linux because they believe in the cause of open source. Many of these people have little or no technical knowledge. Many of these people did not get college degrees in the field technology. What they have is interest in computing. What they have is a respect the principles of community and sharing. What they have is an acute appreciation of open source. All heart and no head.

I am part of the latter. I believe in open source because of its promise and the freedom it represents. I am, to put it simply, not a coder. I don't tinker with kernels or apps or anything of that sort. What I do is use what is there. What I do is make open source software useful to me and in turn share my discoveries with the communities I belong to. What I lack in technical skill, I try and make up for through advocacy.

Heck, before I used linux I did not even care about piracy. Now I use that issue to make a point. Illegal software is illegal software. Proprietary software is expensive. Open source is free, owned by communities that use it. That's the complete opposite of proprietary software, whose buyers only buy a license to use it. They aren't buying the software, just a license to use it. Hence, they don't own it. The contrast being software should empower people and not enslave them to the big fat bottomlines of giant corporations. Software should benefit people paying for it, not just those who write it.

Now, please excuse me if I come on too strong. Going back to the matter at hand, purists and hypocrites (another bunch altogether) just curb my enthusiasm. They have their subtle ways of making people like me feel like we don't belong. I once made the mistake of giving up because it got to me. It ain't gonna happen this time 'round. I still feel strongly for the Left, even though I've severed all ties with them. I still feel a tinge of guilt whenever I hear news of people dying useless deaths because they heed the purists and the hypocrites.

Well this time around, in a wholly different movement, my advocacy isn't going to stop because some senseless nitpicker wants to feel good by bashing others. I'm doing this for the cause. They have their part to do, I have mine. And that is to advocate the cause of open source. I just wish they'd keep their opinions to themselves and their mouths shut, so they don't make enemies of friends. I'd hate to be caught in friendly fire, because I will return fire if I'm caught in a corner. I will. Mark my word, I will.

I was reading this article in PC World about working through the workspace limitations in Windows (PCWorld.com - Windows Tips: Break Through Windows' Workspace Limitations). The article suggested a lot of useful tips, like minimizing or removing the taskbar and toolbars, using F11 to maximize IE without toolbars, using smaller-sized system fonts and using skinning apps. For the desperately cramped users the article suggests using a second monitor, which invariably requires a video card that can handle two displays at the same time.

Now see, here's a situation where Linux could be a simple free solution. Linux users can use up to 8 (count them XPers) virtual desktops. No hardware upgrades required. Right now, I'm using 4 desktops, with 7 apps working simultaneously to handle my browsing, downloading, music, file-sharing, IM/Chat and system monitoring. All of them are launched in full windows, not minimized. Now, running with a window manager like Xfce, my current setup only uses 247 MB in memory. The bulk of that is taken up by my file-sharing app (50MB). Try that with Windows and you'll feel cramped for space and feel a bit of latency with 256MB in memory.



So try Linux and set your desktop free!

Dapper Flight 4

I finally finished downloading the Dapper Flight 4 installer ISO a couple of days ago and installed it right away.

I had initial trouble though because the install wouldn't finish at the GRUB install. I tried to force the issue and the installer froze on me. I tried installing again only to figure out why it failed the first time! GRUB was trying to install itself on HD0! I did not have HD0 since I was using a single (non-RAID) SATA disk. As soon as I noticed that, I tried the option to choose where to install GRUB. The install continued without any further problems.

The first boot was amazingly fast. I decided to go and update everything I could. Then I retired for the evening. I resumed the next day after I got home from work. I couldn't find the app I wanted to download on the default repositories, I went to Debian to try and find them. I downloaded a few manually and installed them. I also installed Java with the help of this HowTo from the Ubuntu Forums. Here's a screenshot of Axel running in a transparent terminal window:



All of my fave apps are running well so far. I did notice that when switching desktops, I experience a split-second of lag. Its like it hesitates a bit when loading the graphics on that switched-to desktop. No complaints here though. For software that's not yet in beta, this really whets my appetite for Dapper's release in April.

Ubuntu and more

There are a lot of exciting things happening these days. Dapper Drake already released Flight 4. I'm downloading Dapper to see how far its gone with regard to developments. I will definitely free up this weekend for it.

Ebuntu is another new development I'm optimistic about as well. Developers have finally decided to merge Enlightenment 17 with the Ubuntu LiveCD. Coolness. I'll definitely wait for that one.

Then there's NUbuntu which I only read about this afternoon. If this one prospers, get those USB drives ready!

How To (GPG) Sign the Ubuntu Code

One of the most frustrating parts of learning is the process itself. Good thing how-to's abound on the web. But when Mr. Google just doesn't get you there, you turn to your friends and your community. Here's a mini-how-to on how I finally figured things out. My thanks to my friend Dave and Ealden (a regular of the #ubuntu-ph channel). They helped me put together the pieces to this puzzle. I'm actually writing this a day after I did this, so pardon any mistakes. Please comment so I can correct any inaccuracies.

Now the first thing you've go to do is get yourself an OpenPGP key. Do this by opening a terminal and type:

$ gpg --gen-key

Follow the instructions. You'll be asked for a few other things, like what kind of encryption you'd like. I chose DSA-ElGamal. Then I chose 1024 bits for the bit-strength. Then you'll have to choose how long you'd like the key to be valid. Your choice. You'll also be asked for a few other things, like your full name, email address and for a comment. I used comment to indicate my online handle - Daysleeper Ed. You also need to input a passphrase. Its like a two-word password for your GPG. A site with instructions for picking a good passphrase can be found here: http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html. Done? We're doing great so far.

When generated you need to send your key to Ubuntu's servers (or whatever the default is, not entirely sure). This step validates you as the owner of the key. Type this in the terminal:

$ gpg --send-key ########

where ######## is your key. If you're not sure what it is, type:

$ gpg --list-keys

Now that you've got a valid key, you can sign the code. First, you'll have to have a Launchpad account. Create one by filling-up the register form here. You'll have to follow the instructions from the email from Launchpad and login after your account is created. If you have a web email account like me then you'll have to do something extra to read the Launchpad mail. It will be encrypted, so you'll have to decrypt the contents. Open up the email and copy the contents. It looks like gibberish, I know. Just copy it and paste it into a new text file. Easy way to do it is to right-click your desktop and click on Create Document > Empty File. That will create a file on your desktop named 'new file'. Now you can rename that or not. Your choice. What did though was remove the spaces from 'new file'. Paste the contents of the Launchpad email in there and save it. Then type this in the terminal:

$ cd Desktop
$ sudo gpg --decrypt newfile

If you renamed the file, replace 'newfile' above with the filename you used. You'll be asked for your GPG passphrase. Voila! The decrypted email contains the link you need to go to to complete the registration process.

Once you're logged in to Launchpad, you'll see your username hyperlinked on the upper-right corner right next to the Log-out button. This will take you to your account options. Once there, you'll see a bunch of details you can fill-out on the right sidebar. For the matter at hand, you're interested in editing your OpenPGP Key. Clicking on Edit OpenPGP Keys will take you to where you can 'tell' Launchpad your OpenPGP Key by entering your OpenPGP fingerprint. How do you find your fingerprint? Type this in the terminal:

$ gpg --fingerprint ########

where ######## is your key. You'll see a long string of numbers and letters labeled as key fingerprint. Copy that and paste it into the Launchpad form. Hit the Find and Import button. After that's done, you'll be able sign the Ubuntu Code of Conduct.

To sign it, you have to download it. You can to do that from here: https://launchpad.net/codeofconduct/1.0/+download After you've downloaded the text file, sign it by going back to the terminal and typing:

$ sudo gpg --clearsign UbuntuCodeofConduct-1.0.txt

Doing so will change that same file into UbuntuCodeofConduct-1.0.txt.asc, which means the file's content is already 'wrapped' with your OpenPGP key. Open it, copy the contents and paste them into the form located here https://launchpad.net/codeofconduct/1.0/+sign then hit the Add button. After that, you're done. You've signed one of the more important documents you'll ever sign online. Welcome to the community, Ubuntero! :-)

A New Beginning

I've decided to moved on. A few years ago, I created this other (second) blog to document my learning experience when I decided to build my own PC. I decided to keep the blog but haven't posted in years. Yes, that's not a typo. My PC is a year-and-a-half old and this is the first time I'll be posting here again. I've decided to revive this blog because I feel the need to document my experience as a newbie in Linux, particlarly Ubuntu. I've always wanted to contribute my experiences back to the community that helped me hobble my first baby steps into Linux. What better way than to document them. Well, from now on I'll be using this blog for that purpose. I'll leave my emotional posts on my personal blog. Heheee.