Out with the old Beryl...

in preparation to upgrade to the newest Ubuntu distro I uninstalled Beryl using this command:

sudo apt-get remove beryl beryl-manager emerald-themes heliodor.

It seemed to work fine. Now to work on the upgrade...

new visual effects!

okey dokey folks. Compiz and Beryl have remerged and come out with this completely awesome desktop effects package called Compiz Fusion. Here's a video of it:



cool stuff, eh?! Yeah, I can't wait to try it - but I'm working on some other projects at the moment (like redoing my website from a linux editor), so it's going on my list of things to do later...

Xubuntu! DVD sound! Yay...then not so 'yay'...

Well, I decided to try out Xubuntu. I used the "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" command to get it and install it. No problems there. Then I tried it out. I had heard that it is supposed to use less CPU power - and man it flew! And Beryl worked on it as well! Whoa! Loved it. Highly recommend Xubuntu!

Aaaaannnnnddddd...I was playing with the audio controls in Xubuntu and found where a video volume was turned all the way down. So I thought to myself, 'Self, this might be why you have no audio with your DVDs.' And I was right! I tried my handy Star Wars Episode III after adjusting the volume and I had sound! And then moving the DVD screen aroudn with Beryl was just awesome.... So cool....

So the world was great...and I had to play with more settings...

now Xubuntu has no panels (so therefore no real controls), Beryl isn't working...and life is sad. You can read exactly what I did in this thread where where I'm begging for help.

Kubuntu works fine...so I may use it to try and uninstall Xubuntu...I'm praying that works. If not, I may be reinstalling ubuntu (and Xubuntu!) all over again...

Fun stuff!

Well, I've gotten a little of what I wanted to accomplished today...mainly to do with beryl. ;-/ yeah - the eye candy is great, but what a pain... I'm not sure which instructions I actually followed the first time I installed beryl...but the result was that in the midst of my goofing around with the settings, my title bar and sides to my windows disappeared (yeah, couldn't move, resize, minimize, maximize or close all open programs). Needless to say this was irritating. I eventually came across an article on PC World which had slightly different instructions for me, I ran them and somehow two more programs were installed and beryl is working pretty decently for me now.

still haven't gotten my mp3s playing, though I think it's just a matter of getting the programs to use my audio card (and not the built-in one on my motherboard) - though I'm not too sure where those settings are at the moment...

still haven't gotten any DVDs to play - couldn't find "libdvdcss2" in synaptic package manager - though I found everything else. Again, suggestions welcome...

I did get WINE installed and eSword through that - though I had already found an article by someone who had done the legwork to make that compatible with WINE and everything. I'm hoping to be able to run Dreamweaver 2, QuickVerse 2005, and maybe even Microsoft Word and Excell 2000 through that. Those are about the only programs I use in Windows which have specific functions that I can't find in any open source linux stuff (the main thing for Word is the "document map" function which I use to organize my class notes - anyone know how to do the equivalent in OpenOffice?).

Next up, other than figuring out my mp3 and DVD woes, is customizing my panels. Gnome defaults are nice...but I've seen some screenshots which were way better....

Ubuntu Fiesty Installed

Alrighty folks, I've decided to record my adventures in linux here. I'm starting with Ubuntu - which I've actually installed once before (I think it was Hoary Hedgehog version...), but I didn't have time to get it right.

Well, I'm back! And I just finished installing the OS (took a total of around 45 minutes - it maybe could have been less, but I was still napping some...hey, I'm on vacation today!!!).

And for an assistant I have my 7 week old son....who is presently napping in my lap. Yeah, he looks so cute when he's sleeping - but he's got a healthy set of lungs, let me tell you!

Let's see, where in the process...ah yes, I am about to get firefox set up the way I want to (I'm using Foxmarks to synchronize my bookmarks, and I've got a list of my favorite add-ons to, um....add on). Then I'm going to transfer a few files over, figure out how to get mp3s and DVDs going. Finally, today, I'm going to see about getting beryl installed. Not sure how that last one will go, but I'm diving in! Hey, if anyone has any pointers, feel free to let me know!

oh, and a few specs on my system:
Celeron 2.0 ghz processor
512 mb RAM
160 Gb hard-drive (for my old Windows XP)
120 Gb hard-drive (where I'm running Ubuntu)
CD/RW drive
DVD burner
I've also got a little oder nVidia video card (with 128 mb of RAM)
as well as a decently old SoundBlaster card.