Using Linux

Because I’ve been installing so many applications lately, my 10 GB partition for Ubuntu is feeling cramped. It may also have to do with the fact that I moved my /home back to the same partition as the OS because of other strange issues.

The last time I did something with GParted, it screwed up the partition. I had to use TestDisk to recover my partition that got lost. This time I plan on backing up my partition first. I’m going to run

sudo rsync -avx --progress --numeric-ids / /media/EXTERNAL/BACKUP/Ubuntu_20070728/

The -x, --progress, and --numeric-ids options I learned more about from http://www.sanitarium.net/golug/rsync_backups.html.

Wow, Beagle has a lot of files. I did not realize. My ~/.beagle directory has 79,832 files in it, taking up 552.3 MB of space. Next task will be to move that directory to another volume and symlink to it!

Anyway, after running rsync I booted into my trusty Puppy Linux because I knew that GParted won’t allow me to work on mounted partitions.

Honestly, I was surprised when the resize went off without a hitch.

I then booted back into Ubuntu and my partition is now doubled in size.

I should have written this post up earlier when I was really frustrated. I should have at least kept more of a running list of annoyances. Also, it should be known that I don’t have anything against KDE users or supporters—I fully recognize that people can have personal preferences. These are just some things that bothered me when interacting with Kubuntu.

Amarok keyboard shortcuts

One of the biggest reasons that I decided to give Kubuntu a shot was that I used many KDE apps regularly, including Amarok. I’ve always found it sluggish in GNOME and thought maybe running it in its native KDE would help. It didn’t really. Even when I switched to a MySQL database instead of SQLite there was still choking and freezing.

One of the biggest surprises to me was that they keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + V in Amarok was overridden by Klipper, some sort of smart clipboard application. After a little tinkering, I was able to make it function in my preferred way, but the whole process just rubbed me the wrong way.

USB drive mount settings

Had I not been able to find a workaround for the following default behavoir, I would never consider using KDE again.

The setting for automounting USB drives when they are plugged into the machine automatically assigns "shortname=lower" to the drive. (I apologize for not having any clearer information or references, I’m writing this out of memory and don’t want to dig anything up.) This might only affect FAT32 filesystems, but that is what most USB flash drives are.

What this causes to happen is that one cannot create all UPPERCASE directory names on the drive. They are forced lowercase. Mixed case names are fine, it is only UPPERCASE that has a problem.

Well, I have a few directories that I want to be named in all uppercase, UCLA for example. The problem arose when I was using Unison, a file synchronization utility, between my hard disk and a flash drive. Through no fault of the program, my directories were being duplicated: one copy in all lowercase, and another copy in all uppercase, completely messing up my synchronization.

The only fix for this that I found was to call the GNOME automounter at startup so that it would recognize when I plugged in a USB drive and give it the right settings. I think when I did this though, it caused duplicate windows that presented options for the newly detected medium to appear instead of the normal single window.

So, in the end, after only a week of using Kubuntu I was longing for the simplicity of GNOME that I had grown used to without all the quirks that interrupted my daily routines. To be sure, there are still quite a few bumps in the road when using GNOME, but generally they do not seem to stop me in my tracks. Plus, we all appreciate familiarity, and that is what I’ve grown to have with GNOME on Ubuntu.

I decided to change the name of this blog tonight simply because I realized that I no longer am just attempting to use Linux, I’m a full-fledged Linux user.

While I may not be any kind of power-user, I get along fine. I enjoy myself doing it as well.

I’ve got a couple of draft posts that I’ll put up soon. Check back for discussions about why I gave up on Kubuntu/KDE within a week and mini reviews of Linux Music Players.

Cheers.

So I ran that install command yesterday in Ubuntu. I felt like I really should try out Kubuntu because I find myself using many KDE applications more than their Gnome counterparts: Amarok, KTorrent, and most recently I’ve tried digiKam. They all seem to have far more functionality than the default programs in Ubuntu.

This seems to be the common knowledge among users as well. KDE and its native applications are more feature-packed than Gnome and its native applications, but therefore they are more complicated and not necessarily recommended for beginners.

Upon startup of my KDE session I was a bit wary because I had grown accustomed to the nice, clean, simple design of the default Gnome desktop in Ubuntu. I’m sure that wariness will fade in time.

More later, when I have had a chance to play around a bit.