What do you guys use Ubuntu for? What add-ons or enhancements do you have that are fun, practical, or interesting?

5/21/2009 2:12:24 PM

Here are steps to enhance ubuntu.
1. Format ubuntu partition and install windows 7

5/21/2009 2:17:26 PM

I use Ubuntu on my netbook. I like it because it's lightweight and user friendly while still giving me all the features I want on my travel and casual use machine. I'd use Ubuntu for my work machine as well, but the sysadmin prefers RHEL. My main activities under Ubuntu are web surfing and email, skype, office suite stuff, some light MATLAB, some light coding, etc...

If it wasn't for gaming and MS Office, I think I would use Ubuntu for everything.

5/21/2009 2:20:56 PM

Compiz,

The Scale function (mimics the desktop functions of Mac OS).

The window grouping function.

Has hundreds of other stuff it does, but those are the two most handy. Get the compiz-config app from synaptic. Synaptic is the other really handy app.

http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/

Sun Virtual Box:
Install Windows 7 inside Ubuntu without having to format It has the gui-tools that let you integrate windows app inside of the Linux Window Manager.

Does Windows 7 have multiple desktops, grep, or find by default?

5/21/2009 2:23:41 PM

the need for multiple desktops is the sign of a failed desktop manager.

5/21/2009 2:30:32 PM

double post: ubuntu is really bad. Theres honestly no point to using it over windows since windows can do everything ubuntu can, but not the other way around.

[Edited on May 21, 2009 at 2:31 PM. Reason : a]

5/21/2009 2:30:32 PM

Quote :

"Theres honestly no point to using it over windows"

I seem to remember Spontaneous mentioning installing Linux on some older PCs in a thread a while back. Ubuntu will likely perform better on dated hardware than Vista or 7 (I don't know much about 7, though). Also it's free.

That said, gnome-do and conky are neat and aid in productivity. Drop metacity and get a better, more customizable window manager like openbox. There's a Linux apps thread in Tech Talk somewhere with lots of good suggestions.

If you're really strapped for resources, Xubuntu is significantly lighter than Ubuntu.

Also, ubuntuforums.org is an infinitely better place to ask these kinds of questions.

[Edited on May 21, 2009 at 2:42 PM. Reason : ]

5/21/2009 2:42:13 PM

yeh.. i install linux about twice a year just to see whats going on. And i always find.. ehh not much. i get bored and delete within a week. hah

5/21/2009 2:54:12 PM

Quote :

"Does Windows 7 have multiple desktops, grep, or find by default?"

Does Linux have ANYTHING by default?

Multiple desktops (There are a half dozen or more good virtual desktop managers in addition to this)

Grep and Find? Windows has had grep (findstr) and find (find) since Windows XP.

I used Ubuntu (and Ubuntu Remix) on a netbook for a few weeks. LOVED the UI, especially on Remix. The add/rem/change package system is REALLY cool, I found myself fiddling with it just for fun after a while. There is so much about Remix that is far superior to Win7 in it's interface (singleton focused UI, full screen App default, pervasive menu desktop) for Netbooks.

Ultimately, we just wiped it and put Win7 on it for one reason: Choppy flash video playback. This isn't really Ubuntu's fault, but Firefox has serious caching problems on SSD's, as does every other Browser we tried (we tried them all). Not a single one could reliably playback Flash video. Spent two days trying alternative flash packages and browser combinations, nothing works. Went back to the Ubuntu 8.04 Dell install... same problems.

My roommate (who owns the netbook) was ready to wipe Ubuntu after two days, but I tried to get him situated and he actually came to really enjoy it as well... except he couldn't do the primary activity he bought the netbook for.

Win7 is a compromise, but dear lord is it a more seamless experience. Not only is the video playback smooth, but it also handles HQ flash video perfectly.

5/21/2009 2:59:28 PM

I had problems with flash video in Firefox when I first installed Ubuntu. It took a day or two of Googling and I've been problem-free ever since.

Wireless adapter configuration was a bit dicey too.

5/21/2009 3:05:09 PM

I use it as a LAMP server, sendmail server, ftp server, imap/pop server, and a bunch of other shit.

5/21/2009 3:25:47 PM

http://www.ss64.com/nt/

5/21/2009 3:31:32 PM

Quote :

"Ultimately, we just wiped it and put Win7 on it for one reason: Choppy flash video playback. This isn't really Ubuntu's fault, but Firefox has serious caching problems on SSD's, as does every other Browser we tried (we tried them all). Not a single one could reliably playback Flash video. Spent two days trying alternative flash packages and browser combinations, nothing works. Went back to the Ubuntu 8.04 Dell install... same problems."

Quote :

"I had problems with flash video in Firefox when I first installed Ubuntu. It took a day or two of Googling and I've been problem-free ever since."

Same here, I can't remember what exactly I did but I believe it had to do with me switching firefox cacheing from the SSD to ram (I had 2 GB in my netbook after all), and the problems have been gone since

but yeah choppy youtube/pandora playback was getting infuriating for me too, but I'm happy with 8.10 on my 901, and 9.04 is looking really really slick with the new notifications stuff, almost mac like with it's pidgin integration

5/21/2009 4:20:05 PM

Quote :

"Here are steps to enhance ubuntu. 1. Format ubuntu partition and install windows 7"

Quote :

"the need for multiple desktops is the sign of a failed desktop manager."

Quote :

"double post: ubuntu is really bad. Theres honestly no point to using it over windows since windows can do everything ubuntu can, but not the other way around."

Quote :

"Does Linux have ANYTHING by default?"

You guys are bound and determined to turn every thread into a *nix vs Windows holy war, aren't you?

At least Noen seems to have actually used varius *nix systems in the past. I'm not sure you've ever even used a *nix system, Shaggy, because you sure seem to know fuck-all about their capabilities. Perhaps you should stick to the Windows support threads, since you don't know how to do a damn thing with a *nix system?

Back on topic, I like Enlightenment 17 as a window manager. It's not as glitzy as some of the newer interfaces on OS X and Windows that amount to gratuitous wastes of resources (long-suspected by fans of money to be a conspiracy to drive hardware sales ). It is, however, extremely configurable and has a memory footprint of around 24MB for me right now. Multiple desktops and focus on hover have been its default operating mode since the mid-90s. It's a common operating mode for many window managers, so it actually works with pretty much every application, including (surprisingly) many full screen 2D and 3D games if the window is set for it. I loathe to think how many Windows applications would be completely broken when using 3rd party tools for virtual desktops, or even the undocumented support for hover on focus.

Contrary to Shaggy's fucking stupid ascertion that virtual desktops indicate any sort of failing, I find virtual desktops to be an amazingly efficient way organize simultaneous workflows. When one or more virtual desktops are full-screen remote desktop connections and you can switch between them by mousing to the edge of the screen, with configurable hotkeys, or alt+scrollwheel it becomes very easy to work on multiple remote systems simultaneously. If you're working on multiple projects you can keep a browser instance for documentation and research, IDE and text editors, terminals for one project all isolated on the same desktop and easily resume work later. I keep a seperate virtual desktop for fucking off: TWW, IM, media player, and such.

Network transparent windowing is another tremendously useful feature of X and something you absolutely cannot do with native Windows.. um.. windows, though XWin32 and similar compatibility layers can bring your X session to a Windows box. You can, for example, drag a tab from a Firefox window running locally to a tab on a Firefox window running on a remote host and forwarded to your local host and have that tab load properly. You can drag a file from your local desktop to a forwarded window and if that application uses the right interface for handling the drag event, you'll be processing a local file on a remote system.

ssh -Y user@remote.system.net xcommand

5/21/2009 7:42:18 PM

Ubuntu is for people that hate windows but dont want to learn real linux.

5/21/2009 10:28:56 PM

Quote :

"I seem to remember Spontaneous mentioning installing Linux on some older PCs in a thread a while back. Ubuntu will likely perform better on dated hardware than Vista or 7 (I don't know much about 7, though). Also it's free."

My friends bought me a new laptop as a birthday present and they are huge FLOSS supporters, so I'm all into it now.

Quote :

"Also, ubuntuforums.org is an infinitely better place to ask these kinds of questions."

As idiotic as this statement is, I feel more comfortable asking people in my local community, despite the fact that every forum is comprised of strangers. Perhaps I will just hang out with evan and hopefully glean his vast wealth of information.


As I've said before, I'm really just trying to gain as much knowledge I can. On the spectrum of computer users, I'm somewhere in between the "disc-drive=cup-holder" user and Richard Stallman. I'm not immersed into the culture and I can't be for some time, but I'd like to be.

5/21/2009 11:13:52 PM

Quote :

"the need for multiple desktops is the sign of a failed desktop manager."

Hmm I work like this: IDE full screen Desktop 1, Servers + command line terminal on desktop 2, testing environment open and IM Desktop 3. Not too sure how that would not be a clusterfuck without multiple desktops.

5/21/2009 11:50:52 PM

Quote :

"Ubuntu is for people that hate windows but dont want to learn real linux."

or not, really.


Ubuntu (desktop) is basically Debian with a nice GUI. Debian is one of the more notorious flavors available in terms of learning curve.


And for the record, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making Linux more accessible.




I have 3 linux machines:

1 Mac G4 PowerPC with server 8.04 installed that I use as a samba file server

1 laptop that I dual boot between 8.10 desktop (for the Compiz-fusion stuff) and Vista Home Premium that I do development on. I like it because it's quick to boot, quick to load, and contrary to what some have said here, I have had 0 issues with flash - but understand that i had to find the RIGHT plugin to use first. Also configuring wireless was a tijuana whore and a half.

1 VM of 8.10 server on a dell poweredge 2650 that serves as a production web server

5/22/2009 12:31:53 AM

Wireless still infuriates me on Ubuntu

you might as well forget (easily) connecting to a 'hidden' network, or a network with spaces in the SSID (might have been fixed since I had to deal with it)

[Edited on May 22, 2009 at 12:53 AM. Reason : ]

5/22/2009 12:53:25 AM

Quote :

"As idiotic as this statement is, I feel more comfortable asking people in my local community, despite the fact that every forum is comprised of strangers. Perhaps I will just hang out with evan and hopefully glean his vast wealth of information. As I've said before, I'm really just trying to gain as much knowledge I can. On the spectrum of computer users, I'm somewhere in between the "disc-drive=cup-holder" user and Richard Stallman. I'm not immersed into the culture and I can't be for some time, but I'd like to be."

That's an absolutely retarded line of thought. TWW has a lot of people who know a lot of things, but you're handicapping yourself if you use it as your only resource for this (or anything else). There are forums and communities out there teeming with experts in all sorts of fields, people who are much nicer, too.

You ask this question on ubuntuforums.org for example, and you're not going to get shit like "Format ubuntu partition and install windows 7." You'd get lots of great help -- not a pissing contest over OS -- or at least pointed in the direction of the dozens of threads like this.

5/22/2009 7:50:33 AM

I use ubuntu for my bittorrent tracker
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/jeos

5/22/2009 8:32:17 AM

But the pissing contests are the only endearing quality TWW has left!

5/22/2009 9:53:47 AM

I have my own personal SVN repository. It's nice to know I have versioned backups of all my code in a secure location.

My Ubuntu machine runs on hardware built in the spring of 1999, so it's officially over 10 years old and still going strong. It clocks at 450mhz, so it's only slightly faster than my router. The machine itself sits by my feet in my office, and has a CAT5 and a power cord coming out of it; and nothing else. The nice thing about running on dated hardware, is it's really quiet and uses about 1/10th the electricity (a cost which adds up over the course of a year).

I have my router configured to forward SSH to it, so I can connect from work, or at home, or a friend's, or from the Philippines and do productive things, however usually I just use screen to transfer over my running IRC client to my terminal. No need to disconnect from any channels that way.

I also have MySQL, Tomcat 6, and Apache running on it. Doing things like deploying or running queries is generally only 2 to 10 times slower than if I run them from my desktop. However doing something like gzipping a 100 meg file on it takes about 3 minutes, while my desktop does it in about 3 seconds; also understandable, since there weren't very many 100 meg files in the 90s.

You can make this machine beep by going here: http://shatner.philihp.com/beep/

PS, thank you for all the beeps.

[Edited on May 22, 2009 at 11:24 AM. Reason : PS]

5/22/2009 11:16:36 AM

^You're welcome.

5/22/2009 12:25:32 PM

wireless was kicking my ass in ubuntu, till I discovered a nifty util called wicd.

wicd is way better for wireless connections than network manager.

5/22/2009 3:46:40 PM

I used wicd for a while, but it dropped my connection constantly. I don't remember what I ended up replacing it with.

Quote :

"ifconfig eth0"

Yeah, lots of that, though.

5/22/2009 4:01:39 PM

Quote :

"That said, Flash support is pretty spotty. I don't think it has anything to do with SSDs and I don't see how setting it to RAM would change anything. If it had anything to do with SSDs it would involve race conditions that were typically not encountered loading from disk, I would assume, so caching in RAM would probably aggravate the same conditions."

Actually, it is. Firefox cache's to the SSD for ALL of it's resource loading (in linux). SSD's are laggy as shit for simultaneous Write/Read. You get around this by setting up a ram partition, and directing the firefox cache to it. It doesn't have this problem in Windows because Firefox uses the regular ol windows memory model.

I didn't want to spend the time to implement this, or have to deal with redoing it everytime Firefox wanted to update, or Ubuntu needed an update.

5/22/2009 4:03:53 PM

Quote :

"That said, Flash support is pretty spotty. I don't think it has anything to do with SSDs and I don't see how setting it to RAM would change anything. If it had anything to do with SSDs it would involve race conditions that were typically not encountered loading from disk, I would assume, so caching in RAM would probably aggravate the same conditions."

Actually, it is. Firefox cache's to the SSD for ALL of it's resource loading (in linux). SSD's are laggy as shit for simultaneous Write/Read. You get around this by setting up a ram partition, and directing the firefox cache to it. It doesn't have this problem in Windows because Firefox uses the regular ol windows memory model.

I didn't want to spend the time to implement this, or have to deal with redoing it everytime Firefox wanted to update, or Ubuntu needed an update.

5/22/2009 4:04:35 PM

Sometime I'll try to find whatever workaround I used to get Flash to play nicely with FF. It really wasn't that complicated, it took just a few minutes, an edit to one config file, and a maybe a system restart to get working. I've also not had to change anything after updating Ubuntu (I think three times now) or FF (dozens of times).

[Edited on May 22, 2009 at 4:12 PM. Reason : ]

5/22/2009 4:11:39 PM

^Yeah if you find it, definitely post it. I only found a general advice post about it, never found an actual implementation solution.

5/22/2009 7:19:39 PM

Red Hat for liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife!!!

5/22/2009 8:45:31 PM

^sellout

5/23/2009 12:40:19 AM

^^^

Out of curiosity I researched that issue some -- it appears it's not necessarily related to SSDs, but more the use of slow-ass SDHC cards in netbooks as SSDs. Firefox isn't electing to use the SSD as storage preferentially, it's just using the user home directory, which happens to be on the craptacularly slow excuse for a SSD. The 4GB "system" SSD I believe those netbooks have is supposed to be somewhat faster and may be a better choice for the cache -- an (upgrade-proof) solution may be as simple as moving each user's ~/.mozilla to a /var/cache/mozilla-[username] directory and symlinking it back to ~/.mozilla.

A file-backed ramdisk would also be a great upgrade-proof solution too. The best way I can think to do that would be to establish a write-behind raid-1 set with a loop image on the slow SDHC, then have the ramdisk re-added to that array in a boot script. The ramdisk would be set write-mostly and write-behind would be set large enough to allow the Firefox write storms (and read storms) to be handled asynchronously, with writes up to the number of --write-behind sectors being synced to the SDHC card without blocking.

To do so, determine the maximum size for the cache and set boot parameter ramdisk_size to this value in KB (ramdisk=131072 for 128MB) and reboot.

Then:

# Initialize disk image
dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/.mozilla-cache.img bs=1024 count=131072

# Setup a loopback device (assuming the secondary 16GB SDHC is mounted on /home)
losetup /dev/loop0 /home/.mozilla-cache.img

# Create a mirror
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --write-behind=1024 --num-devices=2 /dev/loop0 --write-mostly /dev/ram0

# Create the filesystem
mke2fs -j /dev/md0

losetup /dev/loop0 /home/.mozilla-cache.img
mdadm --assemble --scan
mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/ram0

5/26/2009 8:45:06 AM

I got about two words into that post before wanting to kill myself.

5/26/2009 11:41:04 AM

k

5/26/2009 12:41:45 PM

xmms2 + compiz = teh wins

Set a command to do gestures so you can start/stop and go foward and back.

5/28/2009 2:57:20 PM