I'm seriously thinking about going back to Windows XP on my little laptop here. For two reasons:

1. Ubuntu 9.04 / Gnome appears to run sluggishly. Is it the EXT4 file system? Is it some optimization I haven't discovered? I have no idea. Since part of the reason of giving Linux a go was to experience a lean, mean OS with no cruft, it seems just wrong to me. 

2. I'm not really having much fun. I thought it would be fun to dabble and learn and maybe even get MonoDevelop and ASP.NET working. Well it's not fun at all. It's tedious. There is much that I don't understand and what little time I have left over for this kind of activity is spent trying to find exactly the right blog post that explains something.

I want my comfort zone back.

OK, so I installed the Lightning 0.9 add-on to Thunderbird in order to have Calender functionality, and I didn't notice until yesterday that I can't actually add any events to the calendar! The buttons and menu options are disabled.

This evening some quick googling turned up this reference to Bug# 278853 which is actually misleading because this isn't a bug in Thunderbird at all, but a dependency of Lightning 0.8 and 0.9 on a library that isn't installed on Ubuntu 9.4 by default.

Solution:

• Uninstall Lightning 0.9 from Thunderbird's add-on dialog;
• Go to Synaptic Package manager and search for "libstdc" and select to add the libstdc++5 package and apply changes;
• Re-install Lightning 0.9

Result: I can now add an event to my calender reminding me to record the show "Being Human" on BBC America on the evening of July 25th.

Web Camera

My Sony Vaio FE790G has a built-in web cam, a "Motion Eye" lens located in the top edge of the LCD screen border. Last time I tried Ubuntu, in 8.10, I couldn't get it recognised, but the truth is I didn't do much research and I probably didn't expect it to work. I know that in Windows XP, I needed to install special Sony-provided driver.

This time around, given that I am trying to get as deep into the Ubuntu/Linux world as possible, I did some googling, and found this very lengthy and comprehensive thread from other users of Sony Vaios with Motion Eye web cams. It seems that was was needed was something called a "gspcav" driver.

I actually got as far as downloading the driver source code and attempting to compile it (failed) before I thought to ask Ubuntu/Linux whether the driver was already installed:

    $  modprobe -l | grep gspca
 

This command seems to indicate that this is already present on the system. But how to activate the camera? I tried running Gimp and creating a new image from a scanned source, and some intermediate helper application called xsane popped up and allowed me to "scan" from the camera. The results were not encouraging:

That's me holding up my hand in front of the camera, but you can see my Escher print in the background. Do the three copies of the image represent RGB scans? Is this because the xsane program thinks it is talking to a flatbed scanner? I have no idea, but clearly there is a possibility that I can get the webcam to work. More on this as I get around to it, as having a working web camera is not the highest priority right now.

Printing

"It just works" almost applies. My traditional default printer is a Minolta/QMS Magicolor 2350 EN Laser printer, networked on the LAN. I turned it on and went to System > Administration > Printing. Click on the New toolbar button, and up comes the New Printer dialog, giving me a list of two choices: "Other" or "Network Printer". When I clicked on Network Printer, the list expanded to show an addition entry: "Minolta-QMS magicolor 2350 192.168.100.3". The Location host and port parameters were already filled out with 192.168.100.3 and 9100 respectively. Very cool.

I clicked Next and saw briefly "Searching for drivers…", then "Searching for downloadable drivers…", then a new dialog, "Choose Driver". This gave me three options: Select printer from database; Provide PPD file; Search for a printer driver to download. Always the optimist, I selected Select printer from database. The comprehensive manufacturer list contained three possible choices: KONICA MINOLTA; Minolta; and QMS. I tried each of them, and the closest I could get to was Minolta > magicolor 2300 DL. I tried this, and long story short, it didn't work. (I would have been very surprised if it did.) My test page was rendered as a few garbage characters at the top of what could have been a vast number sheets of paper, had I not switched the printer off.

I tried the third option, Search for a printer driver to download. This appeared to be searching the same database as the first option because I could not find a better match from the results. Time to try google to see if I could find a .PPD file for the printer. I can't remember what search terms I used but it can't have been 10 seconds before I got to this gem:

http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=KONICA_MINOLTA-Magicolor_2350

This led me to download 2350lin_ppds.tar.gz, which contained a bunch of language folders, and inside the English folder was KM2350NP.ppd, which allowed me to select the Provide PPD file option. This worked perfectly. I can now print from applications, in duplex too.

This was no harder than searching for printer drivers in Window XP, in some ways easier, particularly in cases where you don't have a CD from the printer manufacturer stuffed with drivers for your convenience.

I plugged my camera into a spare USB port, and waited. It just works… Ubuntu recognised the attached storage and prompted me for an application. I chose F-Spot Photo Manager because it seemed like the right thing to do, and successfully copied the images to the filesystem. That is a complete success, in my book, except for the following issues:

• I'd created a folder ~/pictures/camera but for some reason I could not copy the images from the camera to that location. I ended up putting them in ~/pictures instead, and then moving them manually later.
• By default Ubuntu apparently created a directory called ~/Photos for me but I swear I don't remember seeing it before. Did F-Spot do this, or am I just blind? [Update: The directory was created last night, so I expect F-Spot did it, or perhaps Ubuntu did after it recognised the camera.]
• I couldn't figure out how to move the images from the camera (thus relieving me of the need to delete them from the camera in a separate operation).

(The camera is a FujiFilm FinePix 602z. The laptop is a Sony Vaio FE790G.)

I have Windows XP running in a Virtual Box 2.2 virtual machine now. I gave it 950 MB of RAM, very smooth now that the VirutalBox Machine Additions are installed. Seemless Mode is mindblowing the first time you see it – that's where you have Windows XP applictions floating in the Ubuntu desktop with no container window. For now I have it set back to "normal" mode. Both it and the host Ubuntu OS seem to be getting their IP addresses via DHCP, I never had to specify an IP although I had some all ready to assign to them. I suspect that static IPs will be required at some point…

This blog website looked a little weird in Ubuntu until I installed the Microsoft Core TrueType fonts for Linux. I should do something about that at some point, I guess. On the other hand, I'm not ashamed that my heritage is Windows, so for now, it can stay the way it is.

The Flash plugin isn't installed by default but it was very straightforward to install. I just followed the "Click here to install" link and it worked. Quicktime was almost as easy – it seems that there is a plugin registered to Quicktime but it needs some codecs, but again, it prompts you for the installation and after a few minutes, it just works. Great.

Now, I have all my Windows documents, etc, backed up on to our NAS drive, and although Ubuntu found the network resource and let me browse it (it helps to use the same username/password for every device on the LAN), it seems that many Ubuntu/Gnome applications won't load files from network drives. The "Open File" dialog will allow you to go there and select a file, but it doesn't seem to take effect. Two examples: Restoring my Firefox bookmarks from a .JSON  backup – I needed to copy the .json file into my home directory on the local filesystem before it worked. Also, copying some truetype fonts in to the /usr/share/fonts folder: I was running the File Browser as root, but it still wouldn't let me drag and drop from the network drive. I had to copy the ttf files to a local temp path, and drag and drop from there.

Speaking of the Linkstation network drive, the Windows VM could see it, no problem. Again – I'm using the same username/password for the Windows login. I realise as I write this that I haven't verified that Windows applications can read and write files on the Linux filesystem, but if VirtualBox is anything like VMWare's software, I'm sure there is a way to set up a shared folder and mount it in Windows Explorer.

This post is being written from inside Firefox runing on Ubuntu 9.04.I repartioned the disk into one single EXT4 partition – Windows XP has gone, but the plan is to bring it back via a virtual machine in Virtual Box.

I backed up all my files to our handy network attached storage, a Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB, and I've confirmed that I can access the files from Ubuntu, without any additional configuration. It just scanned the network, it showed up as an icon, and I double-clicked on it and entered my username and password (nothing different about that). It just works. Very cool.

I see the update Manager has just notified me that there are updates. I suppose I should let it have its way with the OS for a bit.