There are big changes afoot!

I have a new domain (loving the new URLs!), new hosting, and a bit of a change of colours on the blog.

Hosting has been moved from 2mhost to Linode. 2mhost has always worked well for me. I initially joined them because they provided cheap PHP5 hosting at a time when this was far from commonplace, but for me, their uptime and support has been excellent – far better than I would have expected from their price point.

I made the change to a VPS solely because I wanted more flexibility, and Linode have so far been excellent for me. They offer a wide choice of Linux distros (I went for Ubuntu 10.4), full shell access, and a managed backup solution for very, very reasonable rates. There’s even an android app to help you manage your account!

I would happily recommend both hosts at this time.

Please let me know if you come across any 404s or gremlins lurking here after the site move!

(Disclosure: link to Linode contains my referral number. But rest assured, if I fall out with them, I’ll be posting that here too!)

As regular readers might know, I’ve been in the process of building my own PC for quite some time now. For my first build, it went well! Building the machine itself was a piece of cake – like putting lego together.

The challenges came though, when I started installing and configuring Ubuntu. For what’s supposed to a user-friendly ‘noob’ distro, I had my fair share of problems getting it up and running.

Here are some of the challenges I faced – and the solutions I found!

Problem #1: Installing Flash

I hit my first problem almost as soon as I started up firefox – no flash. Hey, that shouldn’t be a problem, right? OK, off to Adobe’s download centre. It helpfully recognises my operating system, and offers a choice of packages. I download the relevant one, and…

Nothing. 64 bit Ubuntu isn’t supported. OK, not a disaster – clicking on a blank Flash video offers a choice of Flash solutions to me. I choose “flashplugin-nonfree”, and hit install. I restart my browser…

Nothing. Checking synaptic shows that it’s been properly installed, but nothing happening in Firefox!

OK – next step: Ubuntu Forums. There are many, many users with issues with Flash, but the definitive post seems to be this one, which offers two solutions. I try the first…

Nothing. The second solution states not to use it, but instead to notify the developers of a bug, and wait for a response…yeah right. I try the second, unsupported, user supplied install script, and finally…

Success! Time wasted: 1 hour.

Problem #2: Graphics card drivers

Second problem – I try to enable advanced desktop effects, to be told that “Desktop effects cannot be enabled”. Not a very useful message, but it turns out that generic ‘Vesa’ drivers were being used. OK, since nearly every Google result gives results stating “same day support” for the 4800 series, this one will be easy to sort, right?

Right. :/

First thing – check Envy. This promises to identify the card, download and configure it. Sounds too good to be true? Unfortunately, for me it was – I had no success with my 4850.

The next thing I tried was the Ubuntu Hardy Installation Guide. This page provided two solutions (sound familiar?) One simple solution, one complex one. Guess which solution I tried first? Guess which one didn’t work? Yep, the simple one.

So, it was the 12 step manual solution for me. Frankly, I had no idea what was going on for most of those steps! Let’s just say that my desktop ended up looking like this (bearing in mind that it was completely blank before!):

However, it did at least work. Beautiful desktop effects!

Time wasted: Approx. 1-2 hours.

Problem #3: Guild Wars

Yep, the game of choice for millions of MMO fans no longer works on my new machine, despite working on my five year old PC (also Ubuntu). There’s an 88-page forum thread discussing various methods of getting it up and running under Wine, but to be honest, I didn’t read it all – I skipped to the last page. Just as well I did – it contained the following quote:

“Has anyone ever gotten Guild Wars working on ANY ATI video card?”

No one has responded positively yet.

I suppose I could always try Cedega, but I don’t hold out much hope for that, even. And it’s commercial.

If all of this sounds like I’m on a Linux downer – I’m not! I still love using it day to day, but I had forgotten that the initial configuration could be such a pig.

Oh, and the new machine still kicks ass, incidentally – loving it.

As I mentioned before, I made the switch to GNU/Linux at home some time ago. I talked about the benefits it brought me in terms of PC performance and productivity.

But at work, I’m still firmly rooted in the Windows camp. Why? Primarily because my job involves developing web sites and apps.

Tracking browser usage is a notoriously haphazard affair. According to the much-quoted W3C schools statistics, roughly 53% of users are using Internet Explorer. According to wikipedia, that number is nearly 75%.

Given internet explorer’s ‘unusual’ implementation of web standards – not to mention its market share – it is a necessity to test on these browsers. This is where things get a bit tricky for users of minority operating systems such as Linux, or OSX.

Sure, there are services such as Browsershots which take snapshots of sites using particular browsers, but if you’re anything like me, developing for IE is an iterative process. Make a change, hit refresh. Make a change, hit refresh. Waiting 3-30 minutes to see an update isn’t an option!

I’d be interested to hear comments from anyone who has found a way round this issue.

I was half expecting this post to detail the difficulties I was experiencing getting my printer and tablet to work in Ubuntu, having heard that the process could be troublesome. My experience turned out to be much better!

In fact, to my surprise, the whole set up experience was much easier than in Windows. The phrase ‘plug and play’ is bandied about all too often, but that’s exactly how it was for me in Ubuntu.

I plugged them into the USB port, and they worked, straight away. No messing about with drivers, and no configuration apart from clicking a few boxes for the printer. (On a dialogue box that automatically popped up.)

All of which is fantastic from the point of view of a user; not so great when I was hoping to have something to write about from the experience!

Onwards to the Ipod now. Maybe I’ll have something to complain about after that.

I started my PC experience as a Mac user sometime around 1990, I guess. Having a parent in the education sector, it was the only choice really! My first Mac was the Performa 400, a monster PC with a 40MB hard drive and 4 MB RAM.

I remained a devoted Mac geek until just before the first iMac came out; about 1998. The lure of PC gaming got too much for me, and I moved to a Windows based PC.

I’ve been a loyal Windows fan (yes, we do exist!) until about a week ago, when I made the move to Linux. Ubuntu, to be exact.

I had always liked Windows – to the point of getting really annoyed about Linux enthusiasts on Digg. Even though other, cooler, web developers had long since moved on, I held steadfast in my Windows resolve. I always had a soft spot for asp.net, despite the vast majority of my work being PHP related. So what changed?

My previously athletic PC had gradually slowed to a near stop. I kid you not, it now takes around 15 minutes before my PC starts behaving itself after a Windows startup! I figured I had nothing to lose – if this failed, it was probably time for a new PC anyway.

What a difference with Ubuntu. Despite having every bit of eye candy switched on (wobbly windows, desktop cube…the lot), my knackered old PC runs like a dream. It just does everything I ask it to do, immediately. There is no learning curve as such – my only minor irritation being a troublesome install of Apache / PHP. In the end, though, I have to concede that it was my fault, not Ubuntus.

My old PC has been given a new lease of life.

Thank you, Ubuntu!