We are just hours away now from the release of Intrepid Ibex.  Ubuntu 8.10.  It’s hard to believe that it has been six months since the release of Hardy Heron.  But it has been.  Don’t worry though, the next release is only six months away.  April 2009.  By then I imagine people will be looking for a robust free operating system because no one will be able to afford a new computer with Vista, Umm, I mean Windows on it.  (that’s a funny commercial.)

Ok, so I am a Geek. I can’t help it.

Enjoy the new Ubuntu. I will be sure to add my thoughts on it later this weekend when i get it downloaded and installed on a couple computers.

It’s October and that means that the Intrepid Ibex will be released soon.  It’s scheduled release is October 30, 2005.  Though I knew what a Fawn was (Fiesty Fawn 7.04), I had to look up what a Gibbon was to be sure (Gutsy Gibbon 7.10).  I knew a Herron was a bird (Hardy Herron 8.04) but I had no clue at all what an Ibex was until I saw on.  Just Google Ibex and you will see a picture.  The thing sure does have some horns, that’s for sure.  In case you don’t already know, Ubuntu has releases that come out in April and October.  The version number is the year 8 in this case and the month 10 in this case or 8.10.  The current version is 8.04.

You can download the Beta and play with it and I will do just that in a couple days when I have some free time.

Well, I told you a few days ago that I was going to try to setup an Ubuntu LAMP server. I got it installed and though the $ prompt was a bit overwhelming at first, I did some google searches and solicited a little help from my friend, Nick, and I have a blog setup for my wife and a photo gallery for me.  So much more to do, but so little time to do it.

No, not the lamp you are probably thinking of.  I am talking about Linux, Apache, MySQL, PhP.  AKA LAMP.  It comes with Ubuntu Server and I installed it one time, tried to figure it out, gave up and put Ubuntu desktop on the computer.  I am going to download and install Ubuntu Server again. I still have the old CD but it’s Gutsy Gibbon and I would like to have Hardy Heron instead.

Why am I doing this?  Because my wife is taking classes for her master’s degree and she is learning about Web 2.0 stuff like blogs, wikis, RSS and other cool new things.  She wants to experiment so I am going to setup something in my basement.  I already have a network with several PCs on it.  What’s one more?

If anyone has any pointers, I am all ears.  Otherwise, I guess I could just use google to find some good resources.

How many times have I heard the question “Can you help me?  My computer is….” fill in the blank.  This time it was popping up adult pictures and I don’t want the kids to see them.  Oh boy.  Can you say spyware? Yes, the incessent spyware that plagues Microsoft Windows.  My pastor,  a Korean born naturalized US Citizen, has a hard enough time understanding English, but he understands even less about computers.  He manages to email me the bulletin each week so I can put together a presentation for Open Song so that the worship service is enhanced with hymn lyrics on the wall, but as for spyware, he probably can’t even spell it let alone understand what it is.  But no doubt, he has it.  Now my question is do I introduce him to the world of Linux and Ubuntu?  Or do I try to save as much stuff as I can on his hard drive, zap it and re-install windows?  I would like to suggest he just get a new computer but why put him through the torture of Vista (blah!).

I am not sure what I will do yet, but I will meet with him and see first off if he has any programs like Norton Internet Security or McAfee Internet Security functioning on the computer.  There may be hope but I also may give him my Ubuntu laptop for a week to see if he likes it.  What’s not to like after all?

Oh well, someday maybe Microsoft will be able to get that monkey off their back.  But until then, there will always be Ubuntu/Linux OS’s  or Mac OS to help pick up the slack.

I installed the new Ubuntu on Thursday shortly after it became available.  I tried at 8AM and it was not available. I tried again at 8:30, not available. I tried one more time at about 9:30 and it was available.  I started the process and answered few questions. I checked again at 10:45 and it was waiting on me.  So I answerd the question and let it go.  Finally at about 6:30 PM it was installed. 

Considering that in all liklihood that the server I was downloading the upgrade from was an Ubuntu server, it sure says a lot about the product that so many people can be downloading the application all at once and not one time out error or lost packet. 

I haven’t really taken time to find out about all of the new features but I am sure they will be good.  If you are a windows user, give Ubuntu a try.  I am quite pleased with it and if I remember correctly, when Vista came out, it was not offerred for free. 

Earlier this week I told you about my computer problems with Windows and that I was putting Ubuntu on that particular computer. Prior to this, I was having multiple lockups. The screen would freeze and mouse wouldn’t move. I thought it was my CPU fan so I replaced it. It continued. I suspected a memory problem but before I swapped that out, I tried Ubuntu. I am writing this post on that computer and it has not been rebooted since just after the Ubuntu installation. No lockups at all. This leaves me with one comment.

I recently started using Ubuntu and I love it. I started out with Xubuntu on an old laptop with 256meg of RAM and a 40gig HD. I liked it so much that I took some more memory from another laptop that had died and upgraded to 768 and the 80gig HD. It’s an old Toshiba with a celeron M processor but it runs great with Ubuntu on it.

I also put Ubuntu on an old e-machines computer with a 256 and 40 config like the laptop had. My only problem was printing. I have a Lexmark 1185 all in one and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the scanner to scan, even with Xane or the printer to print. But I didn’t give up. I had an old box running XP so I wrote a little VB app to take advantage of the DDE aspect of Adobe’s acrobat. I am not sure why they don’t have an OCX or API, but DDE works just as well. The app is continually looking in a samba shared folder on the Ubuntu box. If it finds a PDF file, it sends it to Acrobat Reader and prints it out to the default printer. My printer is setup on the old XP box and pretty much only handles printing. I have another XP box that net prints to that printer as well. So I can now print from Windows or Linux across the network to the same printer.

So how do I get the PDF there? I simply setup a CUPS/PDF printer option that I downloaded using Synaptic Package Manager. I had to download a file from Adobe to get it to work, but the install was simple (as is always the case with Ubuntu/Linux)

If you had a similar problem and are interested in the source code or even the exe, I assure you it is clean and safe, leave a reply and I will email it to you with the email address that you registered with.