Ubuntu 10.04, impressions after a week

As a part of doing a general clean up of my laptop, last Wednesday/Thursday I carefully backed up all of the data accross all of the 5 different partitions (all of which had different operating systems, including three versions of Ubuntu), before deleting the partitions and installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as the only OS on my laptop. The process was quite time consuming, having to log into each and every OS and copy anything useful over to the "Data" partition. Ultimately, the effort did pay off in the end though and I'm left a feeling of great satisfaction at the fact that I didn't lose any data and managed to clean up my system.

As for the OS of choice for this rebirth of my laptop, it had to be Ubuntu 10.04. I had used Unetbootin recently to trial both the latest versions of Ubunut and Kubuntu, but ultimately settled on Ubuntu due to its better support of the wireless chipset in my laptop. The wireless is something I've constantly been struggling with over the years, with it behaving strangely, such as reducing power until the connection dies at which point it tries to reconnect. With 10.04 these problems seem largely solved (cross fingers), although my connection still sometimes drops out when I'm on the other side of the house. The other neat little thing is that this newer version of Ubuntu supports the status LED of the wireless chipset.

The few problems which I ran into after the install were to do with third party software and importing items from the previous installs. Google Gears failed to install, and after tracking the problem down it seems that Google is only providing a 64-bit version of the software, meaning that 32-bit users are out of luck. The fix was simply to install the 'xul-ext-gears' package from the repositories, but this could have been better integrated into the interface. The second problem I faced was to do with trying to import all of my old Tomboy notes. I have yet to find a script/program to do this for me and just pointing the synchronisation to the directory containing the old notes doesn't seem to work. It looks like I'm going to have to write some code for this one, not that I mind too much :)

Overall, 10.04 is a very impressive release. I'm more impressed with the stability improvements than any of the new features (social media anyone?).

My new laptop - Acer Aspire 4315 Review

I needed a simple, cheap laptop that I could take to university so that I could work on stuff there and not have to hope and pray that there'll be enough working computers for me when I get to university.

The Requirements
The requirements for my laptop weren't great. All it had to do was have WiFi (802.11 b/g) and be powerful enough to run a simple development web server (LAMP). The other requirement and the most important one was that it had to be cheap. After looking on the Laptop section of PriceSpy I came upon the Acer 4315 going for $699NZD (plus a $99 cash back offer from Acer) which was the same price as the Asus EEE (after the cash back). The laptop came preloaded with Ubuntu 7.10, which was great for me, since I probably would have installed it anyway. So it was a tough decision, whether to go for extreme portability and just a really cool little gadget or to go for a rather standard (if a little old laptop).

I made up my mind when Dick Smith had a computer sale and discounted their laptops by 10% lowering the before cashback price of the Acer to $630NZD. So one Saturday I went down to the store and brought it home.


You get what you paid for
For $630 you don't get a laptop bag or any other extras. Just the laptop and the power cord. Although the salesman offered a upgrade package including more ram, a bag and something else (usb mouse??) for $99 which i declined. Other than the laptop and the power cord there was also the warranty booklet from Acer, a pamphlet on how to put in the battery and turn on the laptop and two instructional bits of paper.

Two bits of paper
The first piece of paper starts off by thanking you on purchasing the computer loaded with Ubuntu, followed by a blurb about linux and Ubuntu in general that sounds like it came from the Ubuntu marketing department.


Near the bottm of the page a section titled "Some system limitations" informs the users that the E key, Wireless key, modem and microphone are all disabled "due to limitations of Linux". (The E key I'm guessing launches some kind of Acer software package that came with the laptop and the wireless key enables/disables the wireless card). It would have been more accurate of Acer to say that the E key is disabled because their developers put out software only designed to run on Windows. The wireless key does work, but in an interesting way. When connected and you push the wireless button it will disable the wireless card, but in such a way that the network manager app doesn't know that the device has been shut down, so the interface is still active and it tries to connect, but ends up failing. Pressing the wireless button again and telling the network manager to connect to the network again seems to work for me. The microphone doesn't work at all. The modem I haven't tried, but I don't really need an analog modem with my laptop anyway.

The other side of the first bit of paper tells you how to set up an account once the computer is turned on. It basically consists of selecting your language, time zone, keyboard layout and your name, username and password. It also tells you how to create a regular user account once you log in.

The second bit of paper tells you how to connect to a wireless network on one side and on the other it gives a detailed list of how to install the automatix dvd and playback codecs.


About the Ubuntu installation

• The laptop came with Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 32-bit installed
• The main partition is ext2, not the usual ext3. Leading to a faster system, albeit a less secure one for your data. (ext2 does not have journaling)
  
• The swap partition is not encased in a linux extended partition but is directly mapped onto the hard drive and has a size of ~4GB
• The computer name is set to ASUS
• The Atheros wireless driver is enabled from first boot

The Cashback

In order to get the cash back offer it turns out you have to go to acer's website and register which model you bought, where and when. Registering was easy, but on the website the folks at Acer try to get you to abandon your cash back offer and instead use the money to buy their extended warranty, with the website claiming that the average laptop service costs $328. I just skipped this part and asked for the money. It turns out that in order to get your cashback you have to send in the barcode from the box the laptop came in, along with your receipt to an address in Australia, within 30 days or no deal. Not to mention the fact that if you don't register on the website within 14 days of your purchase you can also forget it. But the best part is in their terms when they say to allow up to 8 weeks after they receive the request to receive the cash. Seems like a bit of a double standard to me, them giving you only 4 weeks to send your barcode and receipt in, but allowing themselves up to 8 weeks to send you your money. So it seems it'll be sometime in June when I get my money back, a nice little birthday present for me :)

Issues I have with the laptop

• microphone doesn't work
• suspend doesn't work
  
• specialised buttons on side don't work (wireless button works but not fully)
• screen flickers when plugging/unnplugging the power cord
• to disable the touchpad while writing you have to press the 'function' button and one of the F keys.
• the latch at the front makes it sometimes tricky to open the laptop, requiring you to use your nail. But I do like having a latch.
  

All in all, I'm quite pleased with my first laptop. I wanted something basic for a bargain price and I found it. The lack of a microphone is a shame, but I can't remember the last time I used a microphone anyway and the lack of suspend was to be expected. I have yet to install the webserver software so it'll be interesting to see how well it runs. I'm also liking the rough plastic finish on the outside of the laptop, it gives it quite a solid look. The mousepad also feels quite good, compared to some other laptops I've had a go with. Another good point is the fast boot time, which feels even faster than my desktop computer. This is most likely due to the decision to use the 32-bit version of Ubuntu and to use the ext2 file system as opposed to the slower ext3.