Don't Try this at home!

Not being able to wait till LinuxMint 12 (Lisa) was out in any form (beta/alpha/RC, whatever) I decided today I would just change the source.list repositories in LinuxMint 11 and do a distro-upgrade. Well, that worked.... sort of! Linux Mint 12
here is a picture of the login screen after the update:



The desktop, I had to select Gnome (NO effects) to get anything to work at all:




And the menu system:




NOW remember Linux Mint 12 is not suppose to be out until well into November, So what I got is not at all what LM 12 is going to be. I want to make that perfectly clear, I am one of those people that just can't wait. LOL

The good news is I didn't get Ubuntu/Unity - the bad news is I didn't get much more then a desktop.

So don't try this at home....but if you really want to try.

take a look at this post on the Linux Mint website this was written for LM 9, so you will need to change some things to the current distro names, but the idea is pretty much the same idea. Be sure to follow the instructions on the screen. And if it breaks your system, I said you really didn't want to try this at home!

It will probably break your system. Linux Mint even warns about doing it.
I guess I get to see over the next few days if I start to get a real Linux Mint desktop or if I just did this for no reason at all.

Have a great day.

Linux Distro's you've never heard of!

Recently I've been looking for a different distro, because I really don't like the direction Ubuntu is going. And I've come up with a few distros I really like. But it doesn't stop there, I've been looking at a few distros that are not "top" distros, in fact a few of them I've never heard of before.

And while these are impressive, I really wonder why they have not taken off more!

1) Opengeu Linux http://opengeu.intlinux.com - This distro is very interesting, it is using Enlightenment desktop e17, It is based off Ubuntu, now here is the interesting part, at the time of this writing there are only 2 version available for download, LTS version 8.04.1 (Yup that's right from 2008), and "Luna Serena" ie: 8.10 Torrents are the best way to get this, I downloaded "Luna", more interesting, the "Latest version" is "Quarto Di Luna" ie: 9.10 Which doesn't have a download link at all. So it would appear the project is dead, BUT wait! If you click on the "news" link you'll find out that the creator of this distro is in the process of updating it. Sounds like the creator is also moving away from Ubuntu, and toward Debian Testing and E17 SVN + EFL beta 2/3. Here's the thing, if it never gets updated, it is still worth checking out. The last Enlightenment desktop I tried was nice, but didn't really have much to it, Not only is this desktop simple, and easy to use, it's jamed packed with features!
It's old in terms of linux distros, but I would check it out.



2) iGolaware - http://www.igolaware.com/ - This distro is a newer distro, based off Ubuntu, I think it's using 10.10, even thou it say's in the "about Ubuntu" 11.04 - it does almost instantly popup and tell you that 11.04 is available for upgrade. They are using Gnome 2.32.0 desktop,
A Cairo-Dock is on the bottom, It has a lot of apps preinstalled. Including Chrome, some HP printer tools, xbmc media center, Firefox is still v 3.6.13 and Chrome is v 8.0.552.224, it also has ClamTK Virus Scanner installed, it also has Play-On-Linux and many other programs installed. This is going to be one to watch, and see which direction it goes. Will it follow Ubuntu 11.10 or stick with a Gnome 2 desktop? These are the questions. Worth looking at thou!

3) Elementary OS - http://elementaryos.org - One of my friends turned me onto this distro, it was the 1st time I have heard of it, it was the 1st time he heard of it - Thou it's been around for awhile, so more people know about it then me LOL. This is a clean, Ubuntu based Gnome 2 distro. Using a dockly-dock, and lightweight apps. But this video can explain this distro much better then I can.

Follow up on 19 different Linux Distros

Last month I did a review of 19 different Linux Distros. I came up with 5 that I personally really liked, so I asked my wife to install each one and play around with it. Let me say this, she has used Ubuntu before, but never installed it. Her level of knowledge is probably less then most Windows users. She knows how to get online, and look stuff up, watch some movies, that is about it.
So when I asked her to install and play around she wasn't sure she would know how to do it. I said that was kind of the point. I am experienced Linux user, so what I find easy may not be "earsy". This was a good test of the 5 distros I really liked, as to just how easy they were.

These are her notes NOT Mine:

Debian: I just pushed buttons didn't know what I was pushing but it would help if I understood it. It asked too many questions.

Linux Mint: Easy to install Didn't ask a lot of questions, installed quickly, desktop was easy to use.

OpenSuse KDE: Took too long to install. Didn't like it

(MY PERSONAL NOTE: This distro never actually loaded on the real machine, I'm not sure why, I have tried the DVD in another machine and it worked fine)

Pinguy: I like this desktop it was cool, It's like Linux Mint. Easy to install for someone who deosn't understand the words.

Arios: Install was easy except it made me hit the wrong number
(My personal note: She did miss a step twice on the install, but the 3rd time she got it. She wouldn't have if I didn't help thou, she was about to miss the step again.)

I had here install one more distro that I didn't review, Pardus - I found this linux after I did the big review, and decided that I did like it. So I had her try it out.

Pardus: Installing was easy but in the beginning there was some words I didn't understand. It has games, and the desktop was ok.

HER Favorites in order:

1. Linux Mint
2. Pinguy
3. Pardus
4. Arios
5. Open Suse KDE (She liked this more then Debian even thou it never did load up correctly on that machine ????)
6. Debian (She must have really not liked Debian, see the note above)

Echolink on Linux - Ubuntu 10.10 notes

These are just a few notes I have on installing and using Qtel on Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit Linux.

I came across the following blog post a while back, and for the most part, this is what I did to get Qtel to work on 10.10, there are a few things that are different.

http://charlessocci.com/2010/07/06/echolink-qtel-client-ubuntu-10-04-64-bit/

I found the 2nd download link to have better information about the order to install each file.
These have already been made into a Debian package, however if you want to install from the source (beyond, the scope of this blog) the source can be found here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cqinet/files/
The link to the Debian package is here:
http://lz5pn.homeip.net/lz5pn/echolinux/qtel-debian.tar.gz This tarball also has the getlibs package in it.

Install in this order:

1 getlibs-all.deb
2 echolib_0.13.0-2_i386.deb
3 libasync_0.16.0-2_i386.deb
4 libsigc++1.2-5_1.2.7-2_i386.deb
5 qtel_0.11.0-2_i386.deb

After this run this command as root:

getlibs /usr/bin/qtel

if you are using a 64-bit OS you'll probably need to go ahead and force them to install

sudo dpkg -i --force-all ......

The website that I found that link on said all you need is the qtel_0.11.0-2_i386.deb file to install, this isn't true, I found that all of the lib files also needed to be installed. So follow the order in the tarball.

Next thing, it says to change the directory server option in Qtel (both say this) I found that I didn't need to change the server, so I'm not sure why they say to do this.

It is at this point thou, that you will probably want to run the application.
and where I found the biggest problem. Simple but "weird" fix to it.
The default location for the install in the menu is under Applications->Internet->Qtel

The program will start, run and connect, but has no audio (either input or output).
The simple fix to this for Ubuntu 10.10 is running the application with the following command:

padsp -M /usr/bin/qtel

(I went ahead and modified using the menu editor the Qtel entry, on my system)

Here is the "weird" part thou. This method only works, if I you also open up the "Sound Preferences" from the System -> Preferences -> Sound menu.
IF the Sound Preferences is not open, you'll still not get any audio. But with it open you get audio on both the input & output.

I'm not sure why this is, my only guess would be a bug in padsp. But I spent a couple of hours trying to get the application to work, and finally found a similar problem someone else was having, and that was the key. So hopefully you have come across this blog before spending hours trying to figure it out.

And if you know of a fix for the "weird" fix, let me know, I'd rather not have to open up sound preferences if I don't have too.