Ubuntu Desktop part 1: Intro, installation and networking

I’ve now been using Ubuntu (8.04) as my primary OS at home for six months or more (before which I dual booted it as a second OS for some things). I thought I’d share my thoughts on some of the pros and cons of using Ubuntu in this way. I will also comment on my wife’s use of Xubuntu (also 8.04) on her machine.

Prior to my first attempt at running the OS on my machine, my last real use of a Linux OS was back in varsity-almost a decade ago- when we used Red Hat with KDE for our C++ courses. As such I was basically completely green as far as Linux goes, and came from a background of years and years of heavy Windows use.

For reference, my home laptop is a 3.0Ghz P4 with 1 Gig of RAM and an ATi 9700 (with 128M dedicated VRAM I think). Nat was running a similar system but with onboard video.

Installation

One of the greatest parts of the entire Ubuntu experience is the fact that with a Live disk, you can try out the OS without actually affecting your machine. The Live demo runs without a hitch, as does the actual installer. The Ubuntu installer is dead simple to use, whether or not you intend to dual boot your system-it’s also prettier than Windows’s boring old blue text installer from the get go (not that it really matters). I’ve done a fair number of fresh XP installs on my laptop, and Ubuntu’s install process is definitely quicker. The options to partition the installation drive may be intimidating to some, and a safe default could probably be made more obvious, but the argument could be made that anyone installing an operating system should have some idea of what will or won’t damage their system.

Networking

Next up (since it’s the first thing I set up after an install) is the networking. I can definitely say without any reservation that setting up basic networking in Ubuntu is a far more pleasant affair than the equivalent process in all Windows flavours. Microsoft’s attempts to make things easier by introducing networking setup wizards were well intentioned, but rather tend to get in the way.

Initial configuration of the network is intuitive and the default network configuration GUI tool in Ubuntu is a snap to access and use, with very welcome built-in support for profiles that can be switched between on the fly (for example between home and work connection settings). This is something I feel MS should have incorporated into Windows long ago, especially with the rise of the Notebook as a common choice for personal as well as business use.

Unfortunately 3G networking through my N95 is not as simple as on Windows (due to a lack of software support on the part of Nokia) but is possible for those not afraid to get their hands dirty and mess with setup scripts and the command line. A standard user, however, will not be able to achieve this. Once set up though, initiating and managing a connection through the phone is easy enough, if somewhat unstable at times. As far as I’m aware, there is added support for wireless networking in Ubuntu 8.10 which may make things easier.

 

That’s it for now. In my next post on the subject I’ll look at software support, installation and stability.

DIY Wormery

I first read about wormeries and vermiculture a couple of months ago. I thought that with the tons of leaves the huge camphor tree in our garden sheds, a wormery would be a great way to generate a steady supply of organic fertilizer for the veggie patch and the rest of the garden. The "off the shelf" (or more accurately "off the web") ones were pretty expensive, starting at around R600 excluding worms for a smallish bin. Unfortunately the designs I found on the web were all for tyre-based systems and I wasn't too keen on big ugly tyres in my garden.

Luckily, a few weeks later I came across Piet Strydom's instructions for a large, neat, fairly inexpensive DIY wormery made of plastic meat trays. I finally found the meat trays last week and built the wormery, populating it with a bag of worms and bedding bought from Piet himself. I now have a functioning wormery (granted, it's just getting settled at this stage) and I thought I'd share the step-by step.

Components

First off, what's needed for the system:

• Three plastic meat trays (got mine from Macro).
• A plastic tap and nut.
• Silicone sealant.
• Enough shade-netting to cover one tray and a means to attach it (I used small nuts and bolts).
• A wooden board or plastic lid large enough to cover one tray.
• Bungi chords to hold the lid down.
• A drill.

Step 1

The bottom-most tray needs a tap to drain off the worm tea. Drill a hole large enough to accommodate the tap, and insert the tap. Attach the nut for it and seal on both sides with silicone to prevent leakage.

Step 2

To prevent any stray worms falling into the tea (wouldn't want the little buggers to drown) the bottom most tray needs to be covered with shade-netting. Simply cut the netting to size and attach it. In my case I drilled holes in the side of the tray and attached the netting with small nuts and bolts.

 

Step 3

Fluid needs to move easily through the system, eventually ending up in the bottom tray. The worms also need to be able to move up from the middle tray as their food is exhausted, up to the top tray. For these reasons holes need to be drilled in the bottoms of the middle and top trays. I drilled fairly large holes, I saw on Piet's wormeries that he used smaller holes but many more of them. I'm sure either approach should work fine.

Step 4

What would a wormery be without worms? I got mine from Piet (contact him through his website), but there are numerous other providers in the country-Wizzard Worms is one popular supplier in the Cape. I added a few sheets of newspaper first, dampened them and added the worms and bedding on top of that. Since then we've added some kitchen waste as well. This all goes in the middle tray.

Step 5

Finally, it's time to put it all together. Stack the trays on top of each other (tap at the bottom, worms in the middle, empty tray on top) and cover the top tray with a lid. Not visible in this shot are the bungi chords I use to keep the lid on tightly. The whole system should be place in the shade.

And that's all there is to it, around R300 (excluding worms) and an hour's work for a large wormery.

So much for the linux media center

After a fair amount of fiddling with different options last year I finally settled for a TwonkyMedia server running on Ubuntu on an old (and I do mean old) PC as a basic media server solution. The addition of Grip set to auto-rip inserted CDs made adding media fairly easy as well. This setup worked ok most of the time, though it had a tendency to fall apart at the seems at the precise moment I actually wanted to show guests how cool it was to have all my music served up to my '360 for easy use, and these hiccups seemed to become more and more frequent, to the point where we just started using CDs again instead.

Having recently taken the plunge and switched my home laptop entirely to the latest Ubuntu version (8.10) and tried the Xubuntu and Kubuntu flavours as well, I thought the much zippier Xubuntu would make a great choice for a reinstalled media server. The actual Xubuntu install off the Live CD went perfectly of course (if a bit slowly), but from there things pretty much went pear shaped. Xubuntu doesn't include samba sharing or a remote desktop server by default, the only two requirements I actually have for managing the server (and I don't have a decent connection at home to get these components). Twonky itself also refused to run for no apparently good reason, no matter how many times I uninstalled, reinstalled and tweaked it.

Seeing that XBMC (previously Xbox Media Center) was now available as a Live install (and as an install for Linux, Windows and Mac), I thought I'd give that a try instead. The Live CD ran, though very slowly, but once installed I ran into more problems.

I did start trying to track down solutions to some of these issues, but just can't be bothered to keep at it any more. This is why Linux still isn't ready for the average user. XBMC did really impress me though, and I decided that since Microsoft is no longer even selling games for the original Xbox (except as emulated downloads on the '360) I may as well mod my old Xbox and enjoy the swishy goodness of XBMC as it was intended to be used.

Yes, the US elections matter

A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised by a comment my sister made, she said she was sick of constantly hearing about the US elections, and couldn't understand why everyone was so obsessed with it. As pointed out in one of the recent US presidential debates, international perception of America and Americans took a serious dive over the last 8 years. South Africa is no exception, and the typical opinion of South Africans about Americans is hardly positive. I believe that as a result many South Africans (my sister included) have become largely apathetic to what happens in The States. We are so tired of having American culture shoved down our throats and seeing the American government seemingly shoving around 'lesser' countries in the foreign dealings that we seem to be averse to hearing anything more about them.

The problem is, as much as we hate it, what happens in America really does have an effect on us down on Africa's southern tip. With US consumption as high as it is (despite their relatively small population considering the country's total land mass) there isn't a country in the world that doesn't depend on exports paid for in US dollars. Being such a massive consumer of every resource imaginable, the US also has the means to muscle through deals that affect smaller countries' buying and selling power in the world markets.

Most importantly in my opinion though, the US is seen as a world policy leader by many of the major developing countries. World leaders and citizens are finally waking up to the fact that climate change is a reality, that it is almost certainly caused by human activities and similarly that human activity can be changed to counteract it.

The policy choices made by the next American leadership will not only shape how that country reacts to the threat of climate change, but will influence the behaviour of developing giants India and China. Both of these countries are immensely populous and are only now going through a stage of development America and Europe had the privilege of experiencing while their populations were small enough to not massively impact the rest of the world. Asking these nations to hamper their development while America behaves responsibly to the environment will be difficult, doing so while the US continues to ignore the global consequences of it's people's wasteful lifestyles will be impossible.

I have no doubt that this is the most important election Americans have voted in for at least three decades. The economic and political instability that will forever be George W. Bush's legacy will take radical new policies to repair, and the seriously worrying state of our planet will require leadership willing to make very uncomfortable choices focused on the medium and long term instead of short term re-election goals.