Setting up Xububtu was painless, and it's quite a nice version of Ubuntu too.

I then proceeded to install and configure ProFTPd, which is an FTP server app for Linux.  OMG!  What a nightmare that was, it took me most of Sunday and half of yesterday to get all the bits configured.  The problem wasn't so much on the Linux side, but in the actual router (my adsl modem), which has its own FTP server built in (go figure).  So whenever I tried to access the FTP server on Xubuntu using port forwarding on port 21 and its external IP, it redirected to the internal FTP server of the router instead -- very frustrating!  Though it worked within the network using the FTP server's local IP (192.168.*), so I knew it wasn't on the ProFTPd side of things.

So I decided to use a custom port in ProFTPd and in the router, but then it seemed that wouldn't work either!  Wellll... after hours of pulling my hair out trying to get it working, I found out in a forum that it will only work from outside the network using the external IP.  So I remote desktop'd to another machine and hey presto! it seemed to work!  (I say seemed because the machine I RD'd to didn't allow the actual directory listing of the Xubuntu FTP server (because of its own security settings), but the FTP login/pass seemed to work correctly).

So it looks like I've finally got a way to transfer big music files with my mate in Tokyo, yippee!
What a painful and frustrating endeavour that was though...

Oh man... I was trying to install some stuff on Geubuntu for my latest project (next post), but it's too unstable.  Bummer.   I was getting segfaults (system errors) repeatedly and some strange behaviour (like the wallpaper disappearing and not being able to be reset).  Again, like Kubuntu, it was good to check out Geubuntu, but I think I'm sticking to a stable version of Ubuntu instead!

I've started to download Xubuntu (Feisty Fawn 7.04), which is a lightweight version of Ubuntu (geared towards lower-end hardware) and uses Xfce instead of GNOME or KDE.  Xubuntu is a part of the official Ubuntu suite (comprising Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu), which means it will be stable at least.  I only need it as a server anyway, won't be doing any dev on it.

That Geubuntu did my head in, gonna have a Bex and a bit of a lie down while Xubuntu downloads (ie. take a break)...

Having installed and updated XP into the first partition of the old laptop, I proceeded to installing Geubuntu.  I put in the Geubuntu Live CD and loaded the OS.  The login screen looked quite nice, sort of metallic grey.  I had to login which was a bit weird (don't remember having to do that when installing k/ubuntu).  I had to read the Geubuntu doco's (gasp!) to find out that the login and pass is geubuntu/geubuntu (go figure).  The desktop loaded, and all I can say is "wow!", it looks pretty sweet!  The OSX-style dock at the bottom is very nice, it scrolls smoothly and has animations, plus system utils like clock (of course), machine temperature, laptop battery life and cpu meter (which looks disabled presently), plus space for currently-opened apps, etc.

My first impression is that it's fast.  Faster than plain Ubuntu was on this laptop anyway.  I read somewhere that the Enlightenment wm uses a different graphics library or something, that it's not dependent on the video card like GNOME and KDE.  I can't seem to find where I read that, only this.

I then selected Install from the System -> Administration menu (not to be confused with the E menu on the dock).  I had to configure the Linux partitions, basically root (10gb) and swap (580mb) partitions.  It took me awhile to remember/figure out how to use the partition manager, and also which file system to use (I chose ext3 for root, though I think last time I used ReiserFS, can't remember). 
Well, it's installing now, so that's a good thing...

dum de dum de dum... 84%, downloading language packs...
I love installing new OS's, there's that exhiliration of looking forward to something new... geeky I know, but whatever.  It's like the smell of a new book: it smells good AND you get to read it.  Bonus.  ;)

83%? It's gone backwards... weird... it's installing OpenOffice now...

The dock contains some default apps: Firefox, Thunderbird, Terminal, Synaptic, XMMS music player, Songbird (not sure what that's for), VLC video player, GIMP image editor.  Similar to things I'd put in the dock anyway (Firefox, Terminal and Synaptic are musts).  I'd also add the file manager in there.  Apparently Enlightenment has its own built-in file manager (compared to GNOME's Nautilus and KDE's Konqueror).

Configuring boot loader... hope it puts XP in there also!

Ah it's finished, rebooting now...

Hrmmm.... the cd popped out, and there's a big blue square on the screen.  BSOD?
I had to do a manual shutdown. 

Restarting shows the GRUB boot manager (and there is XP, yay!).  Loading Geubuntu from hd now...
Linux partition is being checked after apparently not being checked for 49709 days, mm-hmm.
Hrmm it restarted itself, having found disk errors. 
It seems to have an issue with restarts.  Have to force shutdown again...

Booting up again, seems okay now.  Got to login screen.  Logged in okay (glad I wrote down my pass correctly!).  Desktop loaded, Update Manager alerted updates available (installing now).  System temp around 60C (cripes!), battery at 42%.  CPU meter still not working (is this a bios thing?).  Songbird looks like iTunes.

I'm gonna play with it a bit.  As Enlightenment is still beta and Geubuntu has known issues, I'm not expecting it to be perfect, as long as it's useable and doesn't crash too often, it'll be okay.  After all, look at Windows. ;)

As an aside to the Geubuntu project underway in the last post, I had an issue recently with my "middle" laptop (the Pm one -- I salary-packaged a new Acer C2D 17" monster a few months ago): whenever I turned it on, it would turn itself off.  That freaked me out a bit (I use it as my Linux dev machine as well as my music studio in XP) and having proceeded to read tons of forums about the problem (which is apparently quite common with Acer laptops - doh!), I was worried I'd need to replace it (I started eyeing a 13" Macbook as a replacement -- I'd tried to triple-boot XP, Ubuntu and OSX on the Pm laptop, but that's another story).

I found a place in the city near where I worked called The Laptop Place which specialized in laptop repairs and took the laptop in for service.  I was expecting a major problem and a big bill, but fortunately the dude there fixed it for a mere $99.  Wow!  The problem was that the heatsink on the CPU had broken off and the chip was overheating on power-up causing the auto-shutdown failsafe to spring.  The dude told me I was lucky that the heatsink could be re-screwed to the motherboard, otherwise a motherboard replacement would have been needed, meaning big bucks repair!

Phew...

Awhile ago, while reading up on Linux window managers, I discovered one called Enlightenment, which looked interesting.  I didn't check it out because it looked too much a PIA (and risky) to install it into my Ubuntu installation.

Recently, however, while checking out screenshots of the upcoming Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 release of Ubuntu, I discovered yet another "flavour" of Ubuntu (there are many: such as Christian Ubuntu, Satanic Ubuntu, and others -- ah the beauty of open-source!) called Geubuntu, where the G stands for GNOME (yay!) and E stands for Enlightenment -- in other words, an integration of the Enlightenment window manager into Ubuntu.  Having used Ubuntu for months now and trusting it's stability etc, and also having wanted to check out Enlightenment, I decided to download the Geubuntu Feisty Fawn "Sunlight Edition" ISO (that was a PIA: the download site was ad-driven, and I had to wade through 10 pages of ads before I could download it -- I'm not kidding!).

Now here's the kicker:
I had to re-install XP on that old laptop I talked about previously for testing purposes on another project, so now I am forced to dual-boot this old laptop (with only 20gb hd!) with XP and Geubuntu.  Hopefully around 10gb each will be enough for each OS (pretty sure it'll be enough for Geubuntu, just not so sure with XP!  But since that XP installation is only for testing setup programs anyway, I'm not too phased about it). 

I decided to do a clean install of everything, so I am currently in the process of downloading and installing hundreds of XP updates for the XP partition.  After that I'll move onto installing and dual-booting Geubuntu (for which I have a plan, more on that later).  I'll keep you posted...

Now I won't deny I'm not a sucker for eyecandy!
Since installing Ubuntu, I'd done alot of reading up about Linux, window managers and all sorts.  Ubuntu uses the GNOME windows manager (wm), and being upto speed on that, I decided to check out Kubuntu (Feisty Fawn 7.04), which is the KDE wm version of Ubuntu.  I also wanted to install Beryl, which has alot of funky windows effects (similar to Mac OSX), and I was intrigued having seen this video about Beryl on YouTube.

Having backed-up all my dev stuff from my Ubuntu installation, I proceeded to download the Kubuntu Live CD and install it in the Linux partition.  I then retrieved Beryl through Synaptic, and spent awhile configuring the myriad of effects etc.  It looked good, and the effects were neat. 

However.... there were a few problems:
Firstly, Beryl wasn't very stable.  Sometimes it wouldn't run correctly, and other times it crashed.  Sometimes it left the "shadows" of opened menus on the screen, which would then get in the way, and become annoying.  Secondly, I couldn't get into KDE in general.  I was used to using GNOME, and some of the GNOME apps I'd gotten used to either wouldn't work on KDE or didn't look the same.

I tried hard to make it work for me, but eventually I got a bit disillusioned by the issues, and decided that for a dev machine I didn't need the eyecandy anyway, so reverted back to Ubuntu Feisty, with good ole GNOME and all the things I came to love.

Oh well, can't win 'em all.  I'm glad I checked out Kubuntu and Beryl though.  I knew that over time more of those sweet eyecandy effects would be incorporated into Ubuntu anyway.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 was released around mid-April (not sure exact date), and I promptly updated my installed Dapper Drake to this new version.  Feisty proved to be faster than Drake, as well as having some nice windows effects, which unfortunately I couldn't use on the old laptop I had Ubuntu installed on (the video card couldn't handle it).  The new effects were part of the Compiz/Beryl compositing window manager project and had been integrated into Feisty.

I was keen to "spruce up" the OS with the new effects (rather a lame reason), so I decided to dual-boot my XP with Ubuntu Feisty on my faster laptop (Acer Pm 2ghz 1gb ram).  I found a tutorial on how to dual-boot with XP (like this one) and away I went.  It was quite painless, just had to be careful with the partitions.

About 8 months ago, I decided to install Linux on my old laptop (Toshiba P3 1ghz 512mb ram), as the machine was a bit slow for XP (installed), and I was using XP on a faster laptop anyway.  I can't remember what spurned me to do it, it might have been for a project I had acquired.  My experiences with Linux in the past (some 5+ years ago) were not good at all.  I remember trying to install Redhat: the setup was long-winded and nasty, not "plug and play" at all, and would take hours to configure, as you had to battle with manually configuring the myriad of partitions and obscure hardware cards, drivers, ports and things (basically all the pieces in your machine).  In other words, a real nightmare!

So in looking for a new Linux to install, I wanted something with an easy to use and friendly install procedure, something akin to Windows installations.  I started searching for freee distributions and found Ubuntu (then Dapper Drake 6.10).  It looked simple enough, based on Debian (which a friend of mine had always raved about), and I liked the open-source, community-based meaning of the word "ubuntu": an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'.  Sounded good to me!

I downloaded the Live CD ISO, installed it and the rest is history.  Installing was a breeze (akin to Windows install) and finding and installing apps was easier than with Windows, due to the Ubuntu respositories accessible through Synaptic.

I then proceeded to install PHP, MySql and a few other dev-related apps, like Bluefish editor and apps for MySql.  Needless to say, I had a dev environment up and running on Ubuntu in a couple of days.  It breathed new life into the old laptop.  Though marginally slow, it was faster than XP and more stable, and I converted an old laptop that was not being used to a utilized dev machine.