Pragmatic IT

IT Infrastructure and Software Development from the Customer's Perspective

Linux -- Ready for My Mom, But Not for Geeks

I think Ubuntu 8.04 is ready for anyone who wants a good desktop computer with a decent set of office productivity tools. The installation and update experience with Ubuntu is as good or better than Windows and Open Office does what the vast majority of ordinary users need it to do. My mother is using Ubuntu for e-mail and web surfing and having no problems (beyond what she’d have with Windows seeing as how she’s never used a computer before).

Where I’m getting blocked is when I want to do the power-user type things: e.g. sync to a PDA that only has Windows Mobile 2003 on it or use cutting edge devices like a Lenovo x300. That’s when I find I have to go to Linux Geek Land. At least I’m only recompiling modules, and not the whole kernel :-)

So in that sense, Linux is ready for the average person’s desktop, it’s just not ready for us geeks yet.
Why IT's So Hard

Why is providing reliable IT infrastructure so hard? Here’s a good example.

There was a fire in downtown Vancouver this week that knocked out power to a good part of downtown for up to three days. Angela noted that the Internet was slow the day of the fire. I know there’s a major network hub in the area of the fire at Harbour Centre, and I suspected that something had gone wrong there, despite all the precautions that would have been taken. Now I have proof.

The fire knocked out power to the network hub, and the generator kicked in as planned, but the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services were sucking so much water to fight the fire that the generator had to shut down because it wasn’t getting enough cooling water. Not only was that hard to predict, it would have been really hard to test – I suppose the Fire Department would have loved an excuse to play with their hoses, but I’m not sure the City would have wanted them to run a test that tried to use up all the water in downtown Vancouver.

Keyboard Layouts in Ubuntu

I type enough in Spanish that I like to be able to switch keyboard layouts between English and Spanish, rather than type Alt-whatever to get the Spanish characters (e.g. ñ, ¡, ¿).

In Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy), go to System–> Administration–> Language Support and install Spanish. This requires a reboot. Truth be told, I’m not sure you have to do this step just to get the keyboard layout, but if you type enough in a language that you want the keyboard layout, you probably want the rest of the language support as well.

To install control over the keyboard layout:

  1. Right-click on the top panel (aka menu bar, aka tool bar) and select "Add to Panel..."
  2. Select "Keyboard Indicator". You'll see the indicator appear in the panel. In my case, it said "USA"
  3. Right click on the indicator and select "Keyboard Preferences"
  4. Select the "Layouts" tab
  5. Click the "Add..." button
  6. Select the keyboard layout you want. For those looking for Spanish, note that there's a layout for Spain and a layout called "Latin American". The keyboard I bought in Guatemala is actually the "Spanish" layout. You'll have to figure out what works for you
  7. Click OK until you're back to what you wanted to be doing

Of course, that doesn’t change the physical keycaps. When you’re using the Latin American layout with a USA keyboard, it’s sometimes hard to find some of the special characters. They’re not in the same place on the two keyboards. Fortunately, we have yet another nice advantage of Ubuntu over Windows. You can right-click on the keyboard indicator and select “Show Current Layout” and it gives you a picture of your keyboard. You can even print the layout.
Sound with Ubuntu on Lenovo x300

One of the known issues with Ubuntu on a Lenovo x300 is the sound (up to and including Ubuntu 8.04). There are a few links out there that point to solutions. The one that worked for me is this one in Mikko’s Blog. One very important note: Check which version of the kernel you’re running before you start.

uname --release

Then substitute your kernel version in the rm command. I also got a bit confused by the statement under the “Sound” heading that said to remove the old sound modules. I eventually figured out that he must have been referring to the rm command in his script, rather than actually removing the running modules.

FYI: My rather short list of Ubuntu and Lenovo x300 links is here.

The Truth

From the Linux Loadable Kernel Modules HOW-TO: “This is Unix, and explanatory error messages are seen as a sign of weakness.”
Lenovo x300 and Ubuntu

I’m writing this from my new Lenovo x300 on which I installed Ubuntu 8.04. It was way too easy – just pop in the CD, answer a few questions, and wait. I’ll give more reviews in the days to come.
This is Ironic Somehow

The Canadian Internet Registration Association (CIRA) sent me an e-mail telling me that they were changing the “whois” data so they don’t give out personal information of domain owners. Thunderbird thought it was a scam e-mail.

Is This the Beginning of the End for Microsoft...

…or… The end of the… or whatever.

Here you can read about Microsoft explaining their Health Vault product (sorry, I think you might need to register). “We’re coining a new term, the Unified Intelligence system.” I think experience in IT shows that if you have to “coin a new term” you’re selling something that no one wants. Is Tim Bray right, that the options to Microsoft are here “right now” and we could be seeing the start of a big change?

NetBeans Out of Memory Updating Ruby Gems

I got a message “Exception in thread “main” java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space” while updating Ruby Gems in NetBeans 6.0.1 on Windows XP. It took a little longer than usual for me to find reports of this problem using Google, but when I did I found that it is a known problem.
MySQL From Remote Host

I couldn’t get MySQL Administrator on a Windows XP desktop to connect to a MySQL instance I had running on an Ubuntu 6.06 server that I built as a LAMP server. I was getting:
<blockquote>Could not connect to the specified instance.

MySQL Error Number 2003
Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘server’ (10061)
</blockquote>I had to edit /etc/my.cnf (or /etc/mysql/my.cnf depending on where yours is stored) on the Ubuntu server to comment out the “bind-address” line, then restart the server. I also had to add a non-root user with all privileges. In fact, you have to add two users as described here:
<blockquote>use mysql
grant all privileges on . to ‘user’@’localhost’ identified by ‘password’ with grant option;
grant all privileges on . to ‘user’@’%’ identified by ‘password’ with grant option;
flush privileges;
</blockquote>There are some posts that show how to enable remote logins by the MySQL “root” user, but I prefer not to do it that way.

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