en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/16/cffe628b7f6c1124e84944f8872f589f.html
I've never been a huge fan of Debian because of the myth of the whole unstable vs stable thing. Not to mention I had a bad experience initially with Debian a long time back that made me slightly prejudice against the system. Going into Kubuntu, I was a bit apprehensive. However, I had been using apt-get and Synaptic on Fedora for a while (and now Yum), so I got used to the idea of dealing with all of RedHat's dependency problems. Making the switch wasn't any problem at all. Probably the biggest issue was how Debian arranges some directories, configurations and binaries compared to Fedora. That said, it's not unusable.

Quite the contrary.

I found dual booting with Windows to be dead easy. One of Fedora's weaknesses is that there is no partition tool to easily help a person handle a dual boot system with Windows. You still need a shitty tool like Partition Magic (which royally screwed up my system at one point!). It's one reason, imo, Fedora hasn't made much progress on the desktop.

You still are left with a lot of configuration to do after you get the base installed. Unlike Fedora though which practically needs a DVD to hold the entire disc image, Ubuntu still just needs a single CD. They're practical in having people install from Synaptic, which is better anyway. I mean, after you get a new system, you're probably a few upgrades away still from being up to date. The nice thing about Synaptic is that it's pre-installed, unlike Fedora which requires you to get either that, apt-get and even the Yum GUI tool.

Getting a simple server with subversion, apache, mysql, etc. is quite easy. Just use synaptic, grab your modules and just configure the rest. In about two hours, I had a subversion server running with WebDav and websvn all together!

My only pet peeve at the moment is that I think the GUI could use some improvement. It looks like an old version of Windows 95. Not too handsome. If Fedora has one good thing going, it's that their BlueCurve theme is quite nice to look at.

Unfortunately, I think the people at Fedora probably spent too much time on that and adding as many modules to the base that they forgot about compatibility and stability. Those two areas are definite strengths for Ubuntu. My Dell system at work had no problem at all. First try and I had Kubuntu going in no time. My Dell laptop's DVD/CD Writer locks up depending on the DVD i insert! It was so bad that I was forced to use (yick!) Windows for watching DVDs since Xine would just die.

Anyway, I'll probably migrate my laptop some day to Kubuntu if they continue to produce such a tremendous OS base.]]> Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:13:50 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/16/cffe628b7f6c1124e84944f8872f589f.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/30/29bb1cd29f20b11e822a603e2353d76d.html
I think I mentioned that I held off on debian based systems for a while since my disaster a few years ago of having to deal with debian. However, this time I gave it another try on the basis that the ubuntu distribution looked quite handsomely put together and having a nice community. Tired of Fedora and the bloat, I wanted to try something new with a bit of hype.

As a desktop, it's not based. I always liked the synaptic package manager, especially over yum/yumex. This helped simplify adding some of my favorite software quickly. I mostly prefer KDE over Gnome, but there are a few Gnome packages that I enjoy such as multi-gnome-terminal (although it hasn't been upgraded in ages). Also, gthumb is a very nice picture viewer.

Since I've been using this cruddy, old Fedora Core 5 system, I didn't have a chance to see some of the newer packages or hood ornaments from some of my favorite pieces of software like xmms. Man, xmms has come quite a way! I use ubuntu 7.04 also at work, but I don't use the multimedia stuff as much on the basis that I prefer utilizing my ipod.

One of the biggest things I decided to move towards ubuntu was that my little laptop exhibited issues trying to handle DVDs. It simply would lock up. I noticed this for Fedora since 3. And it wasn't just on my laptop but my old desktop. Naturally, one of the big test was to try playing a DVD. So far it read one of my burned DVDs. I haven't tried putting in a regular DVD in yet, but that's coming up!

Right now, things seem to be moving smoothly. I was able to quickly find some packages like ffmpeg, mencoder through the synaptic interface. I think with Fedora you have to add the non-standard distribution repositories manually. At least, you did the last time I checked. I did a simple search and grabbed those packages without blinking. Also, I didn't have to jump through too many hoops when getting mp3s to work on my system. I'm certain there are a few media formats that'll have issues, but I'll get to those eventually.

Overall, my home Kubuntu system has more functionality than my work's system and I'm starting to taste the delight of working with a better performing system. Now, if I can just add a better video card and another 1gb of ram, I think this thing will seriously kick rear!

If I do have a few disappointments, it's that the upgrade process doesn't seem as smooth as I'd like. I'm a bit timid now of moving off 7.04 since my last disaster. Also, I dislike the fact that despite coming on only one CD, you pretty much have to download all the updates almost immediately after installation. My router is really flaky so I get nervous whenever I have to run upgrades or massive installs via a network. Although Fedora's size has become disputably huge in the last few releases with many unnecessary packages, one thing I do like is that once you have the system, you just need to grab updates through the network; in other words, you're not necessarily forced to grab updates immediately because you'll have most of the packages on disk. Another complaint is that I really want these distributions to have base installations contain all the most recent updates. I don't know if this is necessarily the case, but I'm certain that once a release gets made, there's bound to be large bugs. Instead of having workarounds, just post another bug fix type of release. For me, I just want a fresh install to be 100% reliable. I heavily dislike wasting valuable time re-installing a system.

Anyway, at least with 7.04, I heavily recommend giving this a try. Maybe I might try to switch my laptop to 7.10 and see how that goes.]]> Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:13:09 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/30/29bb1cd29f20b11e822a603e2353d76d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/9/282a946c9724215b0d40b054f66e8745.html Fedora Core 5 laptop system. I like RedHat and I liked Fedora, but Fedora had become overly bloated and no longer was supporting my hardware that well. For instance, since Core 2 my DVD stopped working properly and would lock up.

On the other hand, I've been extremely impressed with my (K)Ubuntu experience and decided to use it for both of my systems. I started off with Ubuntu 7.04 because of the problems when I initially installed 7.10. I think that I had downloaded it too early and encountered a more buggy version. Now though, I think they managed to stabilize it so I did a network type of upgrade. And it went smooth! I had a minor hiccup with Adept (Kubuntu's upgrade manager), so I switched to Gnome to handle this part. No problem there. Took about an hour to download roughly ~1100 packages and install them. Now, I have a shiny new system with all the latest packages that are not in the unstable branch.

Next plans of action are to get LDAP working, NFS, maybe even wireless. Wireless would be nice so that I can just use my main system as a file store while I lazily recline on my couch and program. Having mobile (or immobile computing if you consider being a couch potato) would be cool, even in a spot as tiny as my own.

Anyway, this time around things seem better. I'm still a little hesitant about upgrading my main system, at least until I can get my information properly backed up on a periodic basis to my external drive.]]> Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:11:08 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/9/282a946c9724215b0d40b054f66e8745.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/8/38a794e6bddd8d33fb746a5295e08031.html
Another reason why I was offline, so to speak, was that my internet in LA sucked dick. I use Time-Warner and either my cable modem or router has a problem of constantly rebooting. I'm not sure what other options I have in LA, but if I move back permanently, that's one thing I'll definitely address.

Then my main system had gone down just before I departed for LA. Actually, it didn't go down so much as I attempted to upgrade the damn thing from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10. Something I didn't know much about was that the system requires that you use something called a "restricted driver" because I have an NVIDIA video card. Ubuntu is rather retarded in that the community displaces the driver in a restricted area rather than automatically being integrated when you're building your system. Even less known is that the driver must be re-upgraded each time or re-enabled during kernel upgrades. It's truly retarded ideology that seems counterintuitive in spreading Linux as a mainstream desktop.

I ended up buying a new hard drive (a cool Seagate 500 GB) and simply doing a clean install. After a few unexpected lockups, the system started to experience more smoothness. I had to re-enable the NVIDIA driver, reboot twice (once where I got locked up), upgraded the base software and booted into KDE (KUbuntu) for all this to work. I think the next time I decide to upgrade my system, I'll just purchase a new hard drive, externalize my data and do a clean install (well, I'll at least get another external drive, backup my data and then try an upgrade). Hopefully, the next version of Ubuntu will focus more on system stability with hardware. You really can't call a system "stable" if it keeps crashing and locking up!

Hopefully, all these issues are behind me as I have more things to deal with in the upcoming weeks. Got to renew my passport, two credit cards and get my fat ass back in the gym. At least, things are improving a little here and there....]]> Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:23:54 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/8/38a794e6bddd8d33fb746a5295e08031.html