Using Linux

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.

While I thought it would be a great idea to keep /home on a separate partition for backup purposes and the like, it turned out to be more of a headache than I had planned.

When attempting to login at the Ubuntu prompt I would get an error message saying that my /home directory did not exist. Before those errors I would usually have a problem with /etc/fstab not recognizing my external USB drive or telling me it failed fsck. The odd thing is that the external USB drive and the drive which /home resided on had nothing to do with each other.

After moving /home back to the partition that the rest of Feisty is installed on, I was able to login just fine. (Once again I must say that Puppy Linux saved the day.) I still get superblock errors on my external drive, even though it works fine after the system boots up.

I think I will handle backups using this method with tar.

I also found Unison which should handle syncing with my USB flash drive.

This evening I undertook the upgrade to Ubuntu 7.04. It went pretty smoothly. I started by using these steps for moving /home to a new partition. I learned something new in the process: when exiting Gnome using Ctrl+Alt+F1 all it takes to get back into Gnome is Ctrl+Alt+F7. I have been stuck a few times before because I didn’t know that and it is nice to realize now.

The next step was to insert the Fiesty CD I had burned and restart the system. My plan was to install fresh on a new partition and mount /home at the new partition I created for it. I was impressed that there were only 7 steps to the install and no interruptions after those 7. Ubuntu makes it easy to walk away for awhile once the file copying starts. Quite a contrast to Windows XP where one is constantly interrupted during the installation to ask for more input.

Because I have all kinds of hard drives and partitions I had to go through the manual install. Since I feel like I know what I’m doing in that area it was not hard. I did come across this bug in the installer though. I wasn’t trying to change the size of any partitions but it was a little scary because when editing a partition the New Size box had a value that was from a Free Space value on another partition. It was very strange. I didn’t change any of the numbers and they were ignored. I’m not sure what would have happened if I attempted to change them.

After booting into the new installation I realized that I had forgotten my plan to move one of my external hard drives to an eSATA connection rather than a USB connection. At this point I attempted to do this. The reason it matters is because as an eSATA connection the drive is /dev/sda instead of /dev/sdc. It comes before my two internal SATA drives. Upon reboot the drive wasn’t automounted and that was a bother. I looked in /etc/fstab and the file was using UUIDs to point to the drives. I decided to be lazy and just do a reinstall to fix the issue. It would give me a change to not automount all of the extra partitions I have on the computer as well.

So basically I restarted with the CD again and fixed my problems. I didn’t create mount points for all the partitions I didn’t want mounted and the eSATA drive came up as it should.

I’m happy.

Now just to make sure I have all the software I want.

Every once in a while I dig up old drives that seem to still work (although all drives will fail eventually, right?). Today I’ve got a Fujitsu MPA3035AT 3.5GB IDE drive that I’m going to partition and use for swap for all my (planned) Linux partitions. I found a Fujitsu obsolete product information page for the series it is from even.

I remember reading somewhere that the ideal space for a swap partition is no greater than 1.5x the system memory. Right now that means I’ll dedicate 1.5GB to the swap partition.

I’ve been debating with myself about what to use the remaining ~2GB for. I thought about using it as a small, unreliable backup space for my USB flash drive (which is actually 4GB); or using it as backup for other crucial hard disk data. Today I realized that it might be the perfect space for an installation of Puppy Linux. I’ve been using a derivative of Puppy known as Muppy from a CD off and on for quite a while. It has saved me many headaches in the past.

Now it’s just a matter of turning off the PC and getting on my hands and knees to do the actual hardware installation.

I’ve been planning on doing some reorganization of my hard disk partitions for quite a while now. The occasion of the release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn will prompt me to actually get it done.

I think I will do it this way on the 40GB IDE drive:

• hda1 Windows XP
• hda2 /home (accessible by Windows with Ext2 IFS)
• hda3 Ubuntu
• hda4 openSUSE

I’ve got an old 4.3 GB IDE disk that I’ll use for a swap drive too.

The first step will be to move my current /home directory to a newly created /home partition as recommended by Pelo in #ubuntu. I found a guide to moving /home on the Ubuntu Blog. I’ll then be able to just reinstall an OS and point it to /home during the installation. I just hope it’s not that much hassle getting things like VMware set back up.

I’ve only given GnuCash a week, but I’m afraid that is enough to discourage me.

Quicken is one of those indispensable Windows programs to me. I’ve been using it for about six years and with every transaction entered, my financial history becomes more valuable to me. I really want to find a personal finance program that natively runs in Linux to use instead, but I need the same functionality.

I remember trying GnuCash years ago and it was very barebones software. It has improved, I can tell. The double-entry accounting part of it was not hard to get used to. Instead, the first hint I wouldn’t like it very much was that the reports were not able to be modified on the fly (i.e., changing the date range or accounts to include). I like looking at graphical representations of my data from different angles and through different lenses without much hassle. I have a feeling that I could get all the reports I want if I customize them all ahead of time. I’m not sure I’m willing to step into that learning curve right now.

Today I couldn’t find a way to fix the problem that the General Ledger only scrolls back one month. In Quicken I quite often scroll up to view old transactions because the old transactions are often very similar to current ones. I searched in the Preferences for an option to change this behavior, but I could not find a simple solution.

For now I’ll continue to use Quicken through VMware Server and a virtual Windows XP installation. I have subscribed to the GnuCash feed to keep abreast of changes that could change my mind, though.

Back in January when having problems with my PC I began using Linux primarily for my everyday tasks. After two weeks of using various distributions I decided that I could get by pretty much without booting into Windows all the time.

This blog aims to document my learning experience with various distros and software in the Linux community. I’ve been going strong for about three months, but there still are many frustrations. I rarely have the expertise to post solutions for anyone on a forum, but I am always grateful for the help I receive. While this is basically a log for myself so that I don’t forget things I’ve been doing, I hope something I write here may help someone with an issue or two at some point. It’s all in the spirit of user-to-user support.

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