Ctrl + Shift + NumLock

That’s all it took, and I was back in business.  I’m not entirely sure how I fat-fingered that in the first place to disable the keypad, but I’m sure glad to have it back.  Thanks, bluefrog!

When it comes to chat/social network all-in-one clients, nothing can compare to digsby. Unfortunately, although we’ve been promised a native Linux version for quite some time, it has not yet been delivered. As such, I’ve been quite happy with Pidgin for a chat client, but have been looking everywhere for a decent standalone twitter client.

I’m not sure why I never found it before, but today I found gwibber hanging out in the Jaunty repositories. A ‘sudo aptitude install gwibber’ later, I was very pleasantly surprised.

As you can see, it has a very smooth interface that blends quite well in gnome. What sold me on it though, was how nicely it integrates with Jaunty’s new notification system. I have it set to check every 5 minutes, and when new updates come in, they show up in the now-familiar fade-in-fade-out-overlay in the top right corner of the screen. I like it.

I booted my virtual/physical disk, was very careful to only select the Windows installation from GRUB (see warning in article), and Windows came up like a champ.  I didn’t even have to do the extra steps outlined at the end of the article, but I may go back and do them as a safeguard…  hopefully not borking my install in the process.  The good news for everyone is that VirtualBox is free/open and available for all three major platforms.  Look out, parallels…

Beautiful, isn’t it? I’ll be able to work much more quickly and efficiently now, and that’s what computers are all about, right?

Mark Shuttleworth » Blog Archive » Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software?.

No I’m not joking.  I have actually done a full install (not in a virtual machine) of all of the above Linux distributions.  A few of them in the ‘toyed briefly’ list lasted all of a few hours before being wiped off my machine for something that didn’t make me want to tear my hair out.  (Mythbuntu was really awesome, and I would LOVE to set up a dedicated DVR box with it, but it is less useful as a desktop distribution, so it came off quickly)

Keep in mind that I would classify myself as a ‘novice-to-intermediate’ Linux user.  I’m nowhere near writing my own programs, or contributing to the kernel.  I DO, however, feel crippled if I don’t have a linux terminal handy (I usually prefer command-line over gui for administrative tasks), and feel very comfortable following extensive ‘how-to’ documentation just to get a simple task accomplished (which fortunately is becoming a less common occurence in Linux).

Having said that, here’s my take on all of those distros. In my experience, NO ONE *gets* the end-user experience like Ubuntu and Ubuntu-derived distros.  For the hardware I’ve tested it on (quite a few different configurations of laptops and desktops) and the software packages I’ve tried out, it ‘just works’ better than any other distro.  Quite a few of the flavors are *close* but miss the mark here and there.  In fact, with Ubuntu, I rarely ever have to go searching for drivers (which used to be the longest process of re-installing Windows).  I also have not found any other distribution that has such an extensive software repository.  If it’s a Linux program, it’s probably in the Ubuntu repository.  For those programs that for some reason AREN’T in the repos, the developers almost always host their own repository for Ubuntu.  It’s a simple matter of adding their repo as a resource for the package manager, and then ‘apt-get install’ing the software.  I haven’t seen that type of support for the other repositories.

Speaking of the repositories, I’d like to point out what I feel is one of the greatest advantages of using Linux (especially one that has everything you need in the repository).  Since I use a package manager to install ALL of my software (including the operating system itself), I am able to very simply update ALL of my software with a few simple commands.  Any time a new version of ANY of the software I have installed is released, I get the update immediately.  I don’t have to go looking for new versions of my software separately, it just comes to me, automagically!

Well, I’ve been enjoying using Crunchbang for a while, but just read today about Zenwalk 6.0.  It’s a distro based on Slackware, but it uses the XFCE interface I love so much.  Version 6.0 has incorporated the brand newest XFCE 4.6.  I downloaded the ISO today, and I think we all know what I’ll be doing this evening.   

So far, I LOVE CrunchBang.  I think it may be a little too geeky for me to put on machines for my friends, but it seems to be just about perfect for me.  Here’s a little screenshot for ya… (clicky-clicky for slightly bigger pic)

Like I said, I’m loving it.  It’s super fast, super clean, and gives me quick access to the stuff I use 90% of the time (terminal, Firefox, and file manager).  Oh, and it’s built on the best distro out there (Ubuntu).

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Those of you who know me as a tech/linux geek, know that I can’t stick with one distribution or desktop environment for too long (never more than a month).  This has been my approach so far, but I see it as a way of spiraling around, hitting many facets of a Linux desktop, and slowly settling in on a configuration I feel works best for me.

As far as desktop environments go, I’ve always wanted to be a fan of KDE, but they keep screwing it up for themselves.  I appreciate that they are trying hard to make Linux very graphically pleasing, but through versions 3.x it has come off as…. cartoony or something.  Certainly it was not very professional.  With the new 4.x series, they’ve jumped their game up to a whole new level.  The look and feel of KDE4 is starting to compete with Windoze and Max.  The problem I now have is the instability I’ve experienced with it.  Most recently, KDE 4.2 kept crashing on me, and even specifying that the crash was KDE’s fault. (I also can’t stand that every KDE app starts with a ‘K’.  I know Gnome does it with a ‘g’ but it’s somehow less bothersome to me)

This brings us to the good ole Linux standby, Gnome.  It’s stable, it ‘just works’ how you would expect, and it’s the default for many distributions.  The problem historically has been … well … it was kinda ugly.  Rather than taking big leaps in interface like KDE though, it has slowly but surely been working on it’s A-game (graphically and “user-interfacely” speaking).  Now it has gotten to a point that I don’t think anyone objectively comparing it to Windoze would say one is better than the other.  They are just… different.  (folks comparing it to Max may think Gnome is not quite as nice, which would be an accurate assesment).

XFCE is certainly the “third wheel” when it comes to desktop environments, but it seems to be gaining steam.  It especially helps that it loads very quickly on netbooks and older hardware.  The first time I tried Xubuntu, I was very impressed with how ‘snappy’ my computer suddenly felt, and it still looked pretty good while doing it.  It still has several shortcomings it needs to figure out to be a contender with the Big Boys, but it has already found it’s place to shine (on the aforementioned netbooks and older computers).  I still actually like to have it on a computer as a secondary option.  It lets me have a different experience every now and then without having to reload the system with something new.

*edit*
I was getting ridiculous amounts of spam comments on this particular post, and I was having to clear out the spam queue every day, so I turned off comments.

In Ubuntu 8.10 I had no issues setting up a pptp-vpn connection with Gnome network manager.

1. sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp
2. click network-manager icon in system tray>VPN connections>Configure VPN…
3. Type in server (vpn.yourcompany.com), Username, and Password.

The first time I tried the same in Jaunty, I kept getting an error that the VPN could not connect.  If folks want more technical details (log file errors, more specific info on our VPN server, network-manager version, etc.) I can provide them.

The main thing you need to know is that I found one additional step fixed the problem.

1. sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp
2. click network-manager icon in system tray>VPN connections>Configure VPN…
3. Type in server (vpn.yourcompany.com), Username, and Password.
4. Click on Advanced…>checkmark “Use point-to-point encryption (MPPE)”

I’m currently quite the Ubuntu fanboy.  My Lenovo T60p has Windows 7 (beta) and Ubuntu 9.04 (alpha) loaded to dual-boot, but I only boot into Ubuntu (except for the first day I put windoze on there). *edit* I’ve been using Windows a little more now. It’s…..nice….I guess *edit*

Here’s a little link love.