Ubuntu 8.04

My friend Cesar just asked me to continue blogging... right now Im just setting up my PCs, but in order to accommodate him, I may as well blog about what I am doing. Seeing as its Open Source stuff, I even get to make my way onto the SeneBlog (Chris Tyler's Seneca Planet).

Before I get started, let me make a plea to someone like Andrew Smith, or Cesar, or perhaps even myself to set up a Planet for the Seneca Alumni. I would like to read my friends blogs even if they are no longer specifically writing about Open Source stuff. Another plea to Andrew specifically is to keep cranking out the blog postings... I really love it when you have a new article. Grumble Grumble is my fave.

Anyway, onto installing Ubuntu 8.04. Dont be alarmed by the lack of grammar in the next few paragraphs, I write in my patented "stream of thought" method which needs no grammar.
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I pop in the disk and get on my way... Lets check the CD to make sure there aren't any errors... OOPS 22 files are in error... lets try again -> still 22. Ok lets download a new iso (FYI: i got the first one via bittorrent... second one via http) and check that... 0 errors. Great. Lets begin the install

I speak English, I live in Ottawa... Oh Noes Ottawa isn't a city recognized by the Ubuntu installer... grumble:( Ok I guess I'll say I live in Montreal, its only 2h away.

Guided-use entire disk for my partition... erase that nasty Windows XP install. Set up my account details, and let the installer do its magic. Im actually surprised I didn't get to say which packages I wanted, but whatever.

20 minutes later... (while playing NINs new free online single Discipline)

Alright, first boot, lets see how this goes. Uname,Pword.... Hmmm something funny, the screen is at the wrong resolution. A "glxinfo | grep render" shows that direct rendering is not enabled (I have a 7600GS Nvidia card on this machine). A few seconds later a pop-up shows on my screen saying something about restricted drivers... click the button enter the password for sudo and chose to enable the nvidia card in an easy to use GUI. Machine is dling the driver, installing, and requires a reboot. After the boot the resolution is nice and glxinfo shows direct rendering, glxgears @ initial window size shows ~3000fps woohooo!

Alright, now for installing the software I want. Open up Synaptic, lets install

• Sun Java JDK6
  
• Azureus for sailing the seven seas (yarr!)
• flashplugin-nonfree (the real adobe)
• doxygen
  
• apache2
• php5
• mysql-client & mysql-server
• openssh-server
• firestarter
• g++

In total, there is 306MB of data to download... this may take a while. While its downloading, lets surf the Google Images for a nice background. Lookiee here, FF3.05b. Ok that was quicker than I expected. Lets go for some Gnome themes from http://art.gnome.org GlossyP is my fave, so lets install that. For login Managers I picked the Brasillinux Eye, the Gnome Zen, Devils Candy and Falling Angel (my all time fave), put them on rotate so I have a nice variety whenever I use this machine. Still 5min left for my application installs.

And there you have it... a nicely set up Ubuntu Machine in < 1.5h. Stay tuned to part2 where I configure different things:)