Epic Fail

It doesn’t like me

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Lolwut?

This isn’t actually part of Grub like I first thought, but it was part of what I was trying to boot off of a USB drive. It gave me a good laugh nevertheless.

Upgrades

Every time around a new Ubuntu release the topic of upgrade vs. fresh install always comes up.  I’ve noticed that there seems to be a general hate towards upgrades.  The most common thing I hear is that the upgrade totally breaks your system, it will make you lose all your money, and it will burn your house down.  Ok, well maybe not the last two things, but there seems to be a lot of “OMG upgrades are bad!!!!” out there.  Now I may be going out on a limb here, but I think a lot of people just repeat what others say about upgrades.  I’d be willing to say that a lot of the people that say the upgrade breaks the system have never actually done an upgrade, they just get suckered in by all the other people saying upgrades break your system.  And then it just goes in circles.

Now I’m not saying that Ubuntu’s upgrade process has never broken someone’s system, I’m sure it has, more than a few too.  Nothing is perfect.  What I’m saying is that the upgrade breakage is being blown way out of proportion.  Personally, I have upgraded 5 computers multiple times and I have never had a single thing break due to the upgrade.  My desktop machine has not seen a reinstall since Ubuntu 7.10 was released.  It’s been upgraded three times and it’s still running strong, never had anything break on it due to an upgrade.  So either I’ve been extremely lucky or it’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.  I’m thinking the latter.

</rant>

Compiz in VirtualBox

Yes you read that correctly! As of VirtualBox 2.2, Compiz works inside your VM.  It works best provided it’s supported on the host.  All you need to do is update your guest addons with the newest version and enable Hardware Acceleration in the VM settings.  I tested this on a Nvidia GeForce 8400GS M and it works wonderfully.  It’s not even slow.  It’s just as fast as running Compiz natively.  Incredible!  Good work to the VirtualBox devs!

No xorg.conf, I Thought this Was what Everyone Wanted

Over the past few releases, Xorg has been gradually moving away from xorg.conf.  The goal would be to completely get rid of xorg.conf and have everything “just work” through auto detection.  However, since auto detection was introduced along with some nifty HAL goodness, I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about it.  A lot of people are saying that they actually want to edit their xorg.conf.  This strikes me as odd because a while ago it was the exact opposite.

2 years ago, back when I started with Linux, everyone made a huge deal about editing xorg.conf.  The big complaint was that dealing with xorg.conf was the biggest thing holding Linux back from making it onto the mainstream desktop.  A new user would be turned off if they had to edit a confusing text file to get their graphics working.  If Windows doesnt’ need a xorg.conf, we shouldn’t either.  And it went on and on.

This is where we are right now.  Things should “just work” with little or no configuration, but now people are complaining that they can’t edit their xorg.conf.  I thought that’s what everyone wanted.  It seems to be a no win situation.

Gmail: Not that Awesome with a Mail Client

I’ve been using Gmail for a while and I’ve always been somewhat disappointed in the way it works with an email client.  It wasn’t until recently that I tried to use IMAP for the second time that it really started to piss me off.  Believe me, you’ll spend more time pulling your hair out than actually using Gmail with IMAP.  POP3 isn’t terribly bad with Gmail, but come on, POP is old.  IMAP is becoming the new “in”.  Also it was becoming inconvenient for me since I access my mail from multiple computer.  So I would end up with some mail on this computer, other mail on that computer, and it was never on the computer I was using when I needed to go back to that particular email.

If you want to use Gmail+IMAP with Evolution, you might as well forget it.  You can sort of get IMAP to work with Thunderbird by fooling around with where certain folders are mapped to on the server.  But that still doesn’t work 100%. (I’m looking at you Trash folder )

The reason why this is so problematic comes down to one thing: Labels.  That’s one thing I never liked from the beginning.  I rather prefer folders.  Labels really only make sense if you use the web interface.  If you happen to use a mail client, they are 101% useless.  Not only are they useless, but they also completely ruin protocols like IMAP.  For example, when you try to delete a mail in Gmail over IMAP it doesn’t delete it, it just strips the “Trash” label from it and it ends up back in with all your other mail.  That doesn’t fly with me.  When I say “delete” I mean I want it erased, removed from the server, not moved back to my inbox!   To put it simply, Gmail ruined their IMAP implementation.   Gmail+IMAP has now been labeled (oh the irony!!) FAIL in my book.

So I went looking for another email provider that offered IMAP and I found one called GMX.  I’ve been very impressed with it so far.  The first thing I tried was Evolution+IMAP with it, and guess what, it actually worked like IMAP is supposed to work.  No stupid labels.  I was also extremely impressed with the web interface.  Now I’m one that usually hates web apps and the like with a passion, but I really really liked GMX’s web interface.  And that’s saying a lot.

VirtualBox Update Fixes USB on Linux Hosts

A new version of VirtualBox was releases today, 2.1.2.  Among the changelog was this:

USB: improved support for recent Linux hosts

Sure enough, no more “Cannot connect to USB subsystem” error upon opening the Settings dialog, and USB works without any messing around with anything.

Get it now http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

64bit Flash

Finally finally finally, Adobe has released a native 64bit Flash player. . .

Linky

Edit:

Another announcement

Whoohoo!

Install Qgtkstyle

Since I haven’t found any proper debs of qgtkstyle around, I’m just going to tell how to compile it from source.

If you don’t know what Qgtkstyle is, Qgtkstyle is a Qt theme engine that uses your GTK theme directly.

First thing to do is to enable the Backports repository since you need Qt 4.4 which is in the Backports in Hardy.  You can do this by going System→Administration→Software Sources, then going to the Updates tab and enabling the “Unsupported updates (hardy-backports)” repository.

Software Sources

Click Close and then click the Reload button when prompted.  Now to install all the development packages needed to compile Qgtkstyle.

sudo apt-get install build-essential libqt4-dev libgtk2.0-dev subversion qt4-qtconfig

This is optional if you want to install with Checkinstall

sudo apt-get install checkinstall

Now to get the code

svn co svn://labs.trolltech.com/svn/styles/gtkstyle

There should be a folder in your home directory called gtkstyle. Now enter that directory

cd gtkstyle/

Now compile it

qmake qgtkstyle.pro

Now here you have a choice. You can either just install it directly with

sudo make install

Or you may like to build a deb out of it for easy removal later if need be.  In that case do

sudo checkinstall

and follow the instructions.  They’re pretty self explanitory.

Now if you go under System→Preferences→Qt 4 Settings you can choose GTK from the drop down menu.

Qt 4 Settings

Then do a File→Save and enjoy Qt applications with a nice GTK integration.

Also if you want to see a little Easter Egg move that preview window around. Yes you can actually move that. I won’t spoile the surprise. It gave me a little laugh when I first found it.

Why the hate for Qt?

I’ve noticed there seems to be a lot of “ZOMG it’s Qt! Oh Noes!” going on and I just don’t get it.  I think the reason is some confusion and lack of understanding.  Now I’m not talking about the programming languages behind Qt and GTK, I’m talking about the typical end user’s experience.  People seem to assume that Qt == KDE, Qt requires a lot of KDE libs, and/or Qt looks ugly and doesn’t integrate well in a GTK environment.

First, a Qt application doesn’t always mean it’s KDE.  Yes KDE is based on Qt, but there’s a huge difference between a pure Qt app and a KDE app.  An application that is written in pure Qt has nothing to do with KDE whatsoever.    Some of these include SMplayer, KeePassX, VLC (0.9.2), VirtualBox, and many others.  KDE apps will depend on a lot of KDE specific stuff that will have a lot of dependencies.  This goes on to the second point.  A pure Qt app does not require a tone of KDE libs since it has nothing to do with KDE.  All it usually needs libqt.

Finally to put this integration mess to rest.  Qt integrating into a GTK environment used to be an issue.  This is no longer true.  This argument is deprecated.  Qgtkstyle (which will come bundled with Qt 4.5 ) is a Qt theme engine that uses your GTK theme directly.  It does not try to emulate a GTK theme or anything like that.  It actually uses the GTK theme.  So now it can’t be argued that Qt doesn’t integrate with GTK anymore.  You pretty much can’t tell the difference.

VirtualBox

SMplayer

SMplayer Preferences

You almost can’t even tell those are Qt applications.

So I just don’t understand all the Qt hating going on.

</rant>

2 Years with Ubuntu

This post is long overdue. It should have been made back in June, but anyways….

I have now been using Ubuntu for 2 years.  I started back with Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake.  Looking back now I realize how far Ubuntu and Linux in general has come in 2 years.  When I started with Ubuntu, install codecs required a lot more work as some of the repos were not enabled by default like they are now, installing the Nvidia drivers was very tricky.  Now it’s a very easy process all automated by Jockey.  It’s pretty incredible.  And that’s only some of the differences.  There’s a lot more improved aspects such as detection and installation of printers.  Now if you have a supported printer it should be automatically detected and installed.  I remember when Compiz and Beryl existed as separate projects and both were hit or miss if they worked or not.  XGL was almost a must if you wanted to use either.  Now Compiz Fusion has become very stable and works for a lot of people now.

As for my experience it’s been great.  I’ve learned so much in the past 2 years and still learning stuff.  I probably know more about Linux now than I ever knew about Windows back in my Windows days.  I started out knowing just as little as any other new user to the Linux world.  I had a hard time trying to install Java. When it comes to hardware I always say to do your research first.  If you do your research first and don’t go out and buy random hardware, you almost can’t go wrong.

If you’re a new user, my advice is to stick with it.  It may seem difficult and even frustrating at times, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes like second nature.  Not to mention the gratification that you get when you figure something out.  Linux can be very rewarding.

I think the future looks bright for Ubuntu and I’m looking forward to continuing to use it.  The advances the Open Source world makes are incredible and very fast.  I’m still amazed by the fact that a lot of people get involved with Open Source and Linux for nothing other than passion.  Ahh, community, that’s incredible.   And, well, that’s about it.  I’m eagerly looking forward to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

Also as a side note, I hope to get back to blogging soon.  I haven’t posted anything in a while.