The Challenge

Rambles and Riff Raff about all this and that

Having a feast with Fesity Faun

Published by Esteban Glas on April 29th, 2007 | This post lacks all category except for: Linux

I took a bold step ahead and deleted everything on my old desktop and installed Ubuntu feisty faun.

Installation was one of the most pleasurable Software experiences I ever had. Booted from CD, selected “install or run” and the mini-os loaded quite fast. On the desktop sat a link to install Ubuntu, that leads to 7 easy steps to setup installation.
The advantage was that, since I was already running the mini-os I could browse pages while it progressed.

After installation I faced the only minor glitch: configuring the nVidia driver. I was expecting that, since in my previous 4 Linux distributions I always had problems with it. The first time it took me about 3 days to figure the whole thing out. The last time I spent 2 hours; I was looking forward to a similar session. I was wrong. I got the 3D stuff working in 20 minutes. In case it is of any use to other Ubuntu users, all I had to do is run:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals

(First line grabs the drivers and installs them, second line adds some very nice visual gadgets, although Ubuntu had a grephical interface to enable the advanced nVidia drivers, this did not work for me)

After that I played around for a bit and installed XAMPP for Linux. Started the webserver and laid back and relax watching everything go smoothly. I want to build a nice web development environment on that PC, on which I plan to have some geek fun. Ruby on Rails and Python support are on the pipeline. I do not intend to make the server public, just local to my home’s network.

Now I’ll talk about the interface. I’ve used gnome quite a while, but Ubuntu’s Tailored version just rocks. Although it has a lot of visual effects (which you can enable or disable at will) it still performs smoothly. I have tried the cube desktop, with different things loaded in each of the 4 desktops, including transparencies and some 3D games in demo mode, still the system would not freeze. This is not a minor detail.
I have only unveiled just bits and pieces of the OS so far, yet what I’ve seen has a grip on me. What amazed me most is that I think that non-initiated users might find it is a very simple system to install and use. This was Linux’s most prominent shortcoming, and I do believe Ubuntu did an amazing job solving it.

What’s next? Installing archive and backup software (that should work for the Windows machines as well), and fine tunning everything on the machine.

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