Category Archives: Linux

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

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I’m quite impressed with the new version of Ubuntu, and because it’s a LTS release it means one less VM I need to maintain during the next release cycle. I generally keep a VM of the latest LTS and release version, as well as tracking the development version from Beta 1. This results in 3 VMs (or two if the current release version is also a LTS).

I also maintain a VM of Debian testing, as well as a really minimal version of stable and unstable (I run stable physically as well).

And then I have several minimal webservers, which are running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or Debian stable.

But I digress.

I think this version of Ubuntu is important because it will be around for 5 years and will form the basis of the Linux strategy for a number of organisations. I would certainly recommend it highly, and think it does a good job of providing a decent desktop experience for users of all levels (and particularly non-technical users).

Installing Debian on a Dell Mini 10

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A few notes largely for my own benefit.

We already have a couple of Debian machines in our house (one physical and one virtual), but I wanted to get to grips with installing it on a machine that has some fairly unusual hardware.

All in all it was a smooth install. I created a USB installer with UNetbootin, and installed the base system without issue. It didn’t find my broadcom wireless card, but after enabling all repositories and installing the driver (search for B43 in synaptic) I had a good wireless connection and was able to unplug the ethernet cable.

I then upgraded to a 3.2 kernel, and enabled Mozilla’s Debian repository to get an up to date version of Iceweasel. Both of these went smoothly as well.

The only outstanding issue is the trackpad. The 3.2 kernel has helped a lot, but it is still a little jumpy at times. But it was also a little jumpy under Ubuntu on occasion as well, so I’m not too worried.

Debian runs well on this machine. It seems noticeably faster than Ubuntu, and boot time is significantly faster. If I could sort out the trackpad properly then I would certainly rely on this machine for short trips and coffee-shop web browsing, and it’s nice to see a low-powered and quite old computer running smoothly again.

Looking back and looking further forward

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By this time tomorrow I will have successfully implemented the support of Mac OS X in my workplace. It’s been a long 14 month slog, but I’ve learned a lot about Macs, project management, and a fair few things beside. I’ve also lived pretty much wholly in Mac OS X since April 2011, which scared me at first but now feels oddly familiar.

Next up will be iOS and Linux. iOS is a new thing for me, but Linux certainly isn’t, and it was quite soothing today to open up my Linux laptop and do my first bit of Ubuntu work for nearly a year.  I’ve also (finally) given up Gnome 2, and after a brief dalliance with Gnome 3 have decided that Unity is the interface that I’ll use on all my Linux machines from now on.

Not that I’m giving up my Macs though. Unity and OS X are actually quite similar in a lot of ways, and I see both of them featuring heavily in both my personal and professional future.

New ways of working

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My day job is currently taking me deep into the heart of Mac OS X. It’s not a bad place to be, but it requires me to think in a slightly different way. Thankfully I don’t really have to touch Windows at the moment, which means I’m only bouncing between OS X and Linux, which isn’t too far to jump, and feels quite comfortable now.

This slight shift in focus has lead to a shift in the hardware and software I use, and I’ve found myself (finally) using the GMail interface more and more for email, and  almost reaching the point where I do pretty much everything through a browser of some sort. I’ve also used about 10 different Macs over the last 6 months, so might get round to writing some sort of comparison post at some point.

Oh, and the other change in the way I work comes from Google+, which seems to be the place where I post videos and babble about music.

Installing Iceweasel 4 on Debian

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As I’ve said previously, I’m a fan of new software, but also of stability. So today I decided I needed Iceweasel (Firefox) 4 on my Debian virtual machines (it’s been a quiet day and I was doing a bit of sys-admin work). As it turned out it was practically zero effort, as all the instructions were already written.

So that’s the latest version of both my main browsers running on all three versions of Debian, which makes it a viable option for being productive and getting things done.

I may write more about Debian at some point soon, as I find myself using it quite a lot at present.

A few notes on minimal Linux installations

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I figured it was time I got round to finishing off a few blog posts that have been sitting around in dropbox for what seems like weeks. First off is my attempt to build a really fast and light installation of Debian or Ubuntu for netbooks and virtual machines.

This setup will work using either Ubuntu (alternate or server CD) or Debian . It will give you a basic graphical environment, with a web browser, mail client and terminal, and can be built upon with other software (should you find you need any other software). I find this most useful as a virtual machine, or as a minimal installation for a laptop that will largely access a more powerful machine remotely.

1. Install a minimal installation of Debian/Ubuntu. This involves just installing the base packages with no additional package groups. Once you’ve done this, reboot and you should find yourself at a terminal prompt.

2. Install the following packages (as root): x-window-system-core xserver-xorg gnome-core gdm and network-manager-gnome. Once you’ve done this reboot, and you should find yourself at the graphical login prompt.

3. You should find you’ve got epiphany, evolution, gnome-terminal and not a lot else. You can then add anything else you need through apt/aptitude.

I’ve set up a few of these, and find them useful for development, testing and generally having a computer that I can set up easily, break, and then restore to a fixed point in time.

I’d like to pair this setup with a netbook with a decent screen resolution, long battery life, and more than 1Gb of memory. But that’s a subject for another post.

First thoughts on my new phone

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This Christmas I got a Samsung Galaxy phone running Android. I’ve never had a phone that could do much more than make phone calls and send text messages before, and my new phone feels a lot more like a small computer than anything I’ve owned before.

My initial impression is very positive. It will deal with most of my email and internet needs, and because most of what I use is Google based, everything is integrated perfectly. I can see this phone being used for about half of what I use my netbook for, and I might even be tempted to leave the house with just the phone on occasion.

I’ve also set up an app called talkmyphone, which allows me to optionally forward all my phone’s alerts to my IM client on my computer. So if my phone is downstairs and I’m upstairs then I can still read and reply to texts and know I’ve been called. I may have to experiment with this further at a later date.

As far as other things go, I’ve got dropbox set up, and can take photos and make videos which sync straight to my dropbox account (and thus to all my computers). I’ve also copied a few Gb of music over, and was pleasantly surprised that it will sync with Rhythmbox, although I think I’ll be managing music manually as I have a lot of music and only 14Gb of space on the phone.

As far as phone calls and texts goes, it works fine, and does what I need it to, which was actually my main fear about getting a smart phone. I was a little worried that something that can do everything would do the core tasks less well, but this doesn’t seem to be the case at all.

Oh, and I discovered Angry Birds. It ate an hour of my life and about 20% of my battery. I may have to explore it again soon.

Backing up and syncing data

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I was having a conversation recently about backups, and how Dropbox is great for ensuring that you don’t lose valuable files. However, the free version of Dropbox can only handle a maximum of 8Gb, and once you start looking at music and photographs then I think most of us would probably need a paid Dropbox account to make this method worthwhile.

Alas, the paid Dropbox accounts only come in 50 or 100Gb denominations, and can come across as quite pricey. I think there’s certainly a market for smaller and cheaper paid options, and I think that a 20Gb account at a reasonable price would get a lot of interest.

But yes, I digress. I though what would be useful (for me at least) would be to detail how I back up my data, and also how I sync it between the various machines I use (which is part of the same process for me).

I’m a great fan of Dropbox, and I use it to sync data between my machines and to collaborate with people on all sorts of work and non-work projects. What I keep in Dropbox is anything that might change, or that I will need to access on all my computers. This largely boils down to:

  • Work related documents that I need to share or collaborate on with my co-worker
  • Anything else I’m collaborating on
  • Anything that is an editable file (generally anything created with OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office)
  • Documents I’m currently writing (usually as plain text files, unless they are collaborations)
  • PDFs of books/documents I’m currently reading
  • Useful phone numbers, next of kin details etc.

I also sync my browsing history and bookmarks through Firefox Sync, meaning that on a new/reinstalled computer I just need to install two applications and I can have a fair approximation of my most useful data within a few minutes, regardless of what operating system I’m using.

For actual backups I have a 2Tb NAS (Network attached storage) that backs up my Ubuntu laptop via DejaDup, and my Mac via Time Machine. All my other computers just reply on Dropbox and Firefox sync. I also maintain a few directories available to either just myself or to everyone on our home network. These are things I might want access to occasionally on multiple machines, but that are too weighty for Dropbox:

  • Photographs
  • Books
  • Music
  • Videos
  • Linux disc images
  • My .virtualbox file containing my virtual web server and a few other things

These total about 200 Gb, and I can access them from anywhere on our network (and further afield if I wished to configure the NAS to do so, which I don’t). Each of these items exists on one of my other computers already, but the NAS represents a repository of everything, and would be the one thing I’d save in a fire to ensure I had at least one copy of everything that was important.

I also have a 500Gb portable hard drive that I manually back up things to sometimes, but that I largely use when I’m away from home and want access to more movies and music that I can sensibly fit on my netbook.

I used to have a very complicated email backup system, but since I switched to Google Apps then I tend to let Google do most of the work and just back up my mailbox as part of my DejaDup/Time Machine backups. I also dump a copy of all my useful documents into Google Docs occasionally, and use it largely for real-time collaboration (which Dropbox can’t really handle).

So yes, that’s about it I think. I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone, but it certainly seems to be working for me at the moment.

Backup solutions

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Since I started working exclusively on laptops, I’ve been backing everything up to a 500gb external hard drive. This is working well, but I do sometimes miss having an “always on” desktop computer that acts as a repository for everything I’ve ever owned.

I keep toying with either buying or building something to fulfil this purpose, but I’m not sure what is actually required. I could go for some sort of NAS solution but that would take away the joy of actually building something myself, and I think for £260 I’d want something I could occasionally use for tasks other than storage. I was also looking at the Zotak Z-Box, which would be quiet and energy efficient, but which only takes 2.5″ hard drives (and thus would be more expensive per Gb of storage than a desktop solution).

I suppose what I really need is a couple of 1Tb hard drives in some sort of shuttle setup. I’d also (at some point in time) like to experiment with pairing a Zotak Z-Box with a decent sized SSD drive which should result in a low-consumption (fairly) fast PC that would make a good long term successor to the ageing Mac we use as a media centre.

Of course, this is not a good time for me to be thinking about buying computers, and I should probably think about how best to utilise the ones I have to solve this problem.