Notes from the Mousepad

In regards to Dell’s explorations/websites/surveys regarding Linux on the desktop… I think it’s good they’re asking, but I don’t expect something soon. And if it happens, I don’t think that we’ll see any discount on computers because of them having Linux on the desktop. And I don’t expect any support from Dell (or anyone else) if they (or another major PC builder) puts Linux on the desktop.

For me, the cost item isn’t a big issue because you can already get a computer for $500-$600 that is plenty powerful to do anything you need (except for maybe gaming). And the lack of Dell (or whatever company) support isn’t a big deal to me because we all know how to get on IRC or go to a forum for our support. That’s where the best support comes from, anyway.

To me, the issues are hardware compatibility, having a free-as-in-freedom OS, and getting another option other than Microsoft, and I would actually be willing to pay a bit more for those things. Maybe $50 more for a $600 computer. After all, if I spend two hours trying to set up a wifi connection because the wifi hardware isn’t totally compatible, isn’t that worth at least $20? If I have to do some tricky work to get suspend / resume working, isn’t that worth another $20-$25? And being able to completely wipe my drive and take off Novell’s Suse Linux because I want to put on Xubuntu, but still have everything work . . . Isn’t that worth a few more bucks?

If it takes a few more dollars to make Linux on the desktop financially viable for the hardware vendors, then I’d be willing to pay it.

Ubuntu Illinois / Chicago member Freddy Martinez had given me some brief pointers on filing bugs during one of our more recent Ubuntu-Chicago loco meetings, but my involvement with the ISO testing has really started to give me a taste for what bug reporting and triaging involves. Now that Xubuntu ISO testing is at a decent state, and we have enough testers to keep things moving, it seems like bug-related work will make for a natural progression from what I’m currently doing.

The “Helping With Bugs” wiki page looks like a good-enough place to get started.

I’m starting to better understand the role of ISO testing, and how it differs from bug reporting. ISO testing looks at successes and failures from a big picture – is this release stable enough to get out the door? ISO testing seeks out the show-stopper bugs that would prevent a milestone build from being released. Bug reporting works in a similar way, but on a smaller scale – does this package work as intended?

That’s how I kind of see it, anyway. They are different, but they compliment each other.

Oh, and apparently QA is a whole other ballgame, but I don’t know much about how it differs yet.

After Herd 5′s release, I’ve been playing catch up with other parts of my life. One bit of good news is that my new HP AMD64 computer arrived, and so I’ve been de-commissioning my old computer, and preparing the new machine. Part of getting rid of the old computer has also involved attempts to prepare a Samba file and print server, so it’s a big mess of computer parts around my place right now.

My file server is going to be an old Compaq desktop, which I’m outfitting with the 80gb drive that was the master drive in my prior primary desktop computer. Prior to making the swap, I made a couple of changes:

• I backed up my data,
• Modified the grub and fstab entries,
• Removed the 80gb drive, and set the jumpers on the 40gb drive so that it would be the new master drive,
• Modified the BIOS to indicate that there’s only one hard drive now
• Hoped for the best

It all worked. I know that an 80gb drive might not seem like a lot for a file server in this day and age, but it’s plenty good enough for my needs at this time. Right now, my backup data fills up less than 25gb.

I’ve got to make some quick modifications to the Xubuntu testing pages, so I better get on that. It’s nice to know that I’m making good progress on my machines, though.

it’s been a heck of a past two weeks. Just two weeks ago i knew pretty much nothing about how to edit wiki pages, and then i found myself setting them up so that we’d have an organized platform for testing xubuntu. It turns out that what i set up wasn’t perfect, but at least it was a start.  We’ll have to revamp our testing process going forward, but i’m looking forward to it.

one thing i’ve seen is just how much smaller the xubuntu community is compared to ubuntu and kubuntu communities. there’s just not as many people involved.  still, it’s up to us to continue to make things work. xubuntu is a good project – helping ubuntu linux to run on machines that it wouldn’t otherwise be able to. and xfce is a great window environment in it’s own right, even if it doesn’t have all of the bling of gnome or kde.

if anything, these past two weeks have reinforced in me the notion that, the more i learn about something, the more i realize how little i really know. it seems like there’s so much to learn, but if i look back at my skills and abilities from last year, i’ve come a long way.

I’ve modified the Xubuntu Testing wiki pages to provide better instructions on testing Xubuntu, and hopefully we’ll get a good group of testers fired up. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough tests done on Xubuntu Herds 1, 3, or 4, so no Herd was officially released.

You can take a look at the testing pages here. I know that quite a few of the Chicago Local Community Team members are Kubuntu developers and users, but it never hurt anyone to help out a different member of the *ubuntu family, so I hope some of you will give it a try.

I’m optimistic that we’ll get a good number of testers, though, and hopefully you’ll be seeing a Herd 5 release of Xubuntu Feisty by the end of the week.

<j1mc> somerville32, i had a great install experience with the nightlies leading up to herd4.
<somerville32> j1mc: Did you report that?
<j1mc> no
<somerville32> hehe
<somerville32> See, we need that
<somerville32> We need to get an official testing team together maybe
<j1mc> i’m mostly on xubuntu-user mailing list.
<somerville32> j1mc: Would you like to head up an Xubuntu testing team?
<j1mc> what would it entail? are there other examples of testing teams?
<somerville32> IT seems like you already do quite a bit of testing
<somerville32> So you’d just need to recruit a few more people to help you out and schedule regular testing
<somerville32> Especially just before a pre-release
<somerville32> So that we can release an image as the pre-release
<j1mc> sure. i think i can do that.
<somerville32> What platforms can you test on?
<j1mc> just i386 right now.
<somerville32> Ok
<j1mc> i could get another machine pretty easily. i volunteer for free geek chicago
* somerville32 nods.
<j1mc> we use xubuntu there, so they’d be willing to donate a machine.
* somerville32 nods.
<somerville32> So you’d just need to find a few dedicated individuals who could help test the other official platforms too
<somerville32> Awesome!
<j1mc> and then get them to report their results.
<j1mc> hehe
* somerville32 hands j1mc the “Xubuntu ISO QA Manager” hat.
* j1mc accepts hat

I’d like to give major props to the Ubuntu Wireless Troubleshooting Guide. I was out at a place with free wifi tonight, and I could see the access point via wifi-radar, but couldn’t connect to it.

I switched over to my laptop’s Win2k partition (booo . . .) to do some research, and found the aforementioned guide. After reading it, taking a few notes, and then switching back to my Xubuntu install, all it took was for me to issue two commands via the terminal, and I was connected to the AP. It didn’t even take me to the “Hey, you’re at this restaurant,” greeting page . . . just instant surfing.

I’ve saved the Wireless Troubleshooting Guide to my home folder, and will use it as a reference until I get more familiar with the commands. Having this handy reference also means that wifi-radar is coming off of my laptop.

I went through a bit of trouble installing Xubuntu Feisty Fawn onto my Thinkpad t22 laptop today. The install went off without a hitch onto my desktop PC, but I got one “corrupt package” error after another during the extraction of the base installation files onto the laptop. Perhaps something is wrong with the cd/dvd drive?

As a rather kludgy work-around, I reinstalled a command-line system of Xubuntu Edgy Eft, changed the apt-sources list file to look for Feisty sources, upgraded the command-line system to Feisty, and then installed the Feisty xubuntu-desktop metapackage. That went off without a hitch. I was even able to get wifi up and running after installing linux kernel restricted modules. I obtained the nifty instructions on how to do so from here. As I say, “nifty.”

With a nice install of xubuntu, I’ll now be able to continue on w/ my xubuntu-doc bug reporting, which is off to a decent start.

Even though my schedule has been pretty hectic lately, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and contribute to the Xubuntu documentation project. Why Xubuntu? Well, for one, I use it. Xubuntu Edgy is presently on my Thinkpad t22, and it’s worked great for me. Also, Xubuntu probably receives less contribution from the community than Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I don’t even think that Xubuntu had separate documentation for Xubuntu Edgy – when you first started FireFox in Xubuntu Edgy, it said, “Welcome to Xubuntu 6.06!” The project could use some help, I think.

I’ve hung out a bit on #ubuntu-doc, and am on the ubuntu-doc mailing list. I figure that I’m going to get a start by proofreading. Someone on #ubuntu-doc said that would be a great way to go, especially considering that I’m not a technical expert. I do have a decent way with words, though. Wicked grammar skiillz. So, look for some bug reports from j1mc on the Xubuntu-doc bug report page. I’ll be getting some up there soon.