I got Gutsy Beta to install, but I had to use the alternative install CD

After redownloading the live install CD and verifying MD5SUMs, the install still hung at the partitioner stage. So I downloaded the alternative install image and was able to get it to install. Since installing, I haven’t had a single stability issue with it. It’s looking like a nice update to Feisty, but overall I wouldn’t say there is anything really ground breaking about it.

We’re only 15 days away from the final release and I am looking forward to installing it on my laptop to see if video driver issues become of thing of the past.

Enabling The Cube In Feisty’s “Desktop Effects” : Ubuntu Tutorials : Breezy – Dapper – Edgy – Feisty

I found something this evening in passing that I wanted to pass on to the rest of you. It’s a small fix that will allow the Cube to function properly with the current setup of Feisty and the desktop effects. Currently you can get the wobbly windows but no Cube.

In any event, try the tip below to get the Cube to function if you’d like to stick with Compiz (vs Beryl).

gconftool-2 –type int –set /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/hsize 4
gconftool-2 –type int –set /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/number_of_desktops 1

Via: Ubuntu Tutorials

Filed my first bug report

I’ve submitted a bug report(my first ever) to the Ubuntu developers, because of a reproducible error with Filezilla in Feisty Fawn. Here’s a little lead-up to why I felt I needed to submit this(Normally if something doesn’t work right, I just wait until it gets fixed or find another program to use).

Last weekend I dumped my Arch Linux install and opted to go with a the latest testing release of Feisty Fawn. For the most part everything worked quite well, I’m really impressed with the pre-release of Ubuntu. During this week, Filezilla(my FTP client of choice) worked just fine. Now, this past Friday evening, I wanted to completely redo the configuration of my laptop. I dual-boot with a XP partition for work and I wanted to make my XP partition even smaller so I chose to do the whole laptop again. Since I was happy with my Feisty experience from the prior week, I decided to install it again. I used the exact same media I used about a week ago. Now for some reason I had more issues. I had a difficult time getting the ATI proprietary drivers working properly. And for some reason Filezilla did not work. This really stunk as I spend quite a bit of time FTP’ing between servers. Why would Filezilla work with one install and not in a second, identical install? Just to make sure I didn’t make a mistake, I went ahead and reinstalled Feisty again. Sure enough, Filezilla still does not work.

Here are the details of the bug. When Filezilla is launched for the first time, it creates a hidden folder in the Home directory called .filezilla. If that directory does not exist, the app segfaults. But does create the folders. With the folder there, the program launches, but can never successfully list remote directories. The segfault could be recreated by deleting the .filezilla directory.

Now because I don’t like any other available FTP client, and I didn’t believe the issue was anything specific to me, I created a launchpad account and filed a report for Filezilla. Within minutes of my entry, I received an email asking for more info. I went ahead and got them the debugging info they were looking for. Now as of this morning, there have been a few more reports from the community and my bug has been listed as a duplicate, but the cool thing is that it has been confirmed and patch already submitted. Now I just need to sit back wait for an updated release via apt-get. Fun stuff!

Quicktip – disable your time and date from being reset to UTC in Ubuntu ArsGeek – Free your inner geek »

Hmmm, I think I suffer from this problem as my time is always wrong on my workstation running Ubuntu. Will has to try this to see if it fixes it.

I recently had a friend using Ubuntu who’s time/date was constantly being set back to UTC, much to her frustration.

Here’s how to change this behavior.

First, we’re going to modify (and make a backup of) your rcS file in the /etc/default directory.

Quicktip – disable your time and date from being reset to UTC in Ubuntu – ArsGeek – Free your inner geek »

Destined to dual boot

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but a few weeks ago I broke down and purchased a new laptop. I went with a Thinkpad z60m. My intentions with it, is to run Linux as the primary OS, but because I also plan to use it for work when I’m on the road, I still need to have the ability to boot XP. So the same day I received the laptop, I wiped it and installed a dual boot setup with Ubuntu and Windows XP. This works fine, except for when I miss the boot menu and it goes into Linux and I need to reboot again and try to remember to catch it next time. I have an idea about about a feature Linux should have there, but I will post that some other day.

Over this past weekend I installed VMware server on my home workstation that runs Ubuntu. I was really impressed how easy it was to install and setup. And in no time I had XP installed as a virtual machine. I used this guide to help me with this. The only issue I experienced was that I needed to install xinetd to get vmware server to install properly. But with XP running in a VM, I was able to use it for everything I would need to while on the road.

So last night I wiped the laptop and reinstalled Ubuntu and then installed VMware server. Soon after, installed XP Pro in a virtual machine, and quickly realized there is a problem. Unlike my home workstation, my laptop is and will mostly being connecting via it’s WiFi card. The virtual install does not recognize the wifi card and XP has no network connectivity. Oh man! Now I haven’t researched at all to see if there are ways to make it work, but I really don’t want to jump through hoops to use wifi on XP installed as a virtual machine. So this weekend I’m going to re-do my install so I’m configured to dual boot again.