the specs are: an ecs p4vmm2 motherboard with a 1.7 ghz pentium 4, 512 meg ram, 40 gig hard disk. it has almost everything built-in — video (s3 savag4, 32 meg shared memory), audio (ac’ 97 audio codec) and lan (10baset/100basetx). there is no floppy installed (do we still need these things?)

i had a “fun” time installing ubuntu 7.10 with this old computer. the desktop cd install didn’t work. i tried several times with different vga configurations and it just wouldn’t install properly. so, like the laptop, i resorted to install 7.10 using the alternate install cd and it worked.

what i learned from this installation exercise is that “modern” operating systems will be better off in a unit with more than 256 meg of memory. this applies to both xp and linux. get the most memory you can afford.

i get the impression that the ubuntu desktop install cd will work properly with newer computers. but i do feel that support for older computers should also be important as they are one of the more likely candidates where linux would be used.

i realize that the camera’s resolution isn’t that great to begin with but that’s really how my mail looks at the moment. yeah. i really should get a new monitor.

anyone willing to donate their 2nd hand stuff?

the monitor of my windows desktop started going blinky-blinky on me. i mean, its like looking at websites through a dimmed out kaleidoscope. and the screen’s getting darker!! barf. well, the thing is around 10 years old…

then my speakers dies out on me. i can hear a slight “thud” from the subs when i turn on the juice but the power led doesn’t even turn on. aauugghh. this is stupid. i have to do a surgery on it tomorrow.

hmmm… maybe this thing’s contagious and i should get these two to isolation. so now, i look at stuff (at least with windows) like i have sunglasses on. and deaf.

not a good day really. i hate mondays.

the “mp3 player” came with a usb connector so you can transfer files between it and your computer. you don’t really need the software in the accompanying cd that came with the package. besides, it only runs on windows.

once connected, you will see two usb flash disks pop up in your computer — one is for the cell phone and one is the memory stick. its better to leave the sub directories that you see there alone. you can probably add but don’t delete directories. the m2 has an mp3 subdirectory so that’s where you transfer the music. btw, i was able to sccess the flash disks on both windows and linux.

i converted an avi file of an anime episode to 3gp using a separate program not included in the package and then transfered and viewed it on the “mp3 player” but the screen was too small (128 x 160) so i wouldn’t advise it unless you find that squinting is fun. i would imagine myself getting fed up with watching stuff on that pretty small screen. it may be better if you can flip the video 90 degrees (160 x 128) but the “player” doesn’t have that capability for videos. it does for pictures though.

it also has a camera. sort of. its 0.3 megapixels only so high resolution pictures are out but pictures do come out usable. and it even has a night mode.

and did i tell you that it also works as a cell phone? cool!

a friend of mine lent me his old laptop for a couple of months — an hp compaq nx6120 — with a note “have fun. do what you want.” cute. next thing i did was backup the data and tried installing ubuntu.

it wasn’t easy though. i tried for a whole day to install 7.04 and it just got stuck right after booting the graphical interface. i heard the welcome sound, i can see the status bar and then i see this note:

there was an error starting the gnome settings daemon.

some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly.

the last error was:

did not receive a reply. possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

gnome will still try to restart the settings daemon next time you login.

ugh. bad sign. i tried re-burning the iso at a lower speed and i still get the same error message. i even tried to install the kubuntu flavor and also gave the other boot options a go — noapic vga=771 — still no joy. of course, i consulted the forums and i read that there were several people who tried it with the same laptop model and it went well for them. this tidbit of information made my little situation a tad more frustrating.

while i was doing the rtfm thing (in another computer), i tried installing pcbsd 1.4 (da vinci) and it went pretty well on the first try. so i know it can be done with ubuntu as well. i do recommend downloading cd2 of pcbsd as well to make your life a little easier. i was able to surf, do some mails, view an avi file or two. installation of programs is easy thanks to pbidir.com. but…

i didn’t want to give up on ubuntu just yet. so one last thing to try before throwing in the towel — get the alternative install cd (text-based) for 7.04. its not as “fun” as the graphic install but it may do the job.

the first try stumbled a bit and i had to reset the laptop but after the second attempt, i was able to get ubuntu 7.04 installed and updated. so now, i’m a bit happier when i started out the day.

observations:

i feel like a kid with a new toy. but that’s just me.

shades of brown is an acquired taste. i will get a new desktop in the future.

i was mildly surprised. this version of ubuntu is slick. i like the gnome interface. nicely done.

the usual gripe is — java and flash is not installed by default. i had to get them for me to be happy with youtube and play java games (my son).

screem seems to be a nice html/xml editor. its like homesite where i deal with the raw html tags. cssed looks promising as a css editor to replace topstyle lite. and quanta plus — a web development environment — deserves some looking into.

openoffice had a hard time updating. i’m not sure what the reason was but it was finally done after several retries.

i downloaded adobe acrobat reader and it gave me an rpm file. double-clicking on it didn’t install the program. bummer. i tried looking for it in the synaptic package manager but it came up empty. so i just deleted the rpm package. i know i can install it via a console but you can’t really ask an ordinary computer user to do that, can you? besides, envice does the job nicely and it came installed.

pcbsd has the right idea about pbi installers. its easy. my wish for pcbsd is to have more popular programs/applications available and packaged in pbi.

i should get more fonts.

i have to get a usb mouse for this thing. using the touch pad gets old pretty quickly for me.

these days 256 megabytes of memory is really not enough to do some serious work. it will get you by but things get slower when you have three or more programs running and the mouse gets choppy at times.

yeah. i can live with ubuntu. happily. the only hurdle now are games.