I must admit that my curiosity got the better of me when screenshots of Ubuntu’s 8.10, otherwise known as Intrepid Ibex, started to make their appearance. It is only at alpha2 stage so it’s definitely a no-no for production systems. However, it does run surprisingly smoothly even at this stage. Yes, I have seen rough edges and the biggest of them all has made me install it onto my spare PC; there is certainly tendency for systems to hang when you try running 8.10 in virtual machines, my preferred method for these kinds of explorations. Try it in VirtualBox and kernel panic messages ensue while you can log in on VMware Workstation only for the desktop never to load. Those could be major deficiencies for some but they have both been reported with the former being seen by many and the latter being flagged by my own self.

Because I was using a version with the alternate installer, the usual slickness that we expect of Ubuntu installations wasn’t apparent. I am sure that will change in time for the final release but I didn’t find it too taxing to get things going with this means. Nevertheless, I reckon that we will see the usual feel return in later development versions and very much in time for the final release. Because I was installing over the top of a previous Ubuntu installation, I didn’t want to lose everything but I needed to leave it wipe out the previous root system partition for it to continue without freezing. Because my home area is on a separate partition, there was no problem and it picked up settings like desktop backgrounds without a fuss. One thing that might annoy some is that all this takes manual intervention; you don’t get the sort of non-destructive and seamless upgrade capability that openSUSE 11 gives.

What you get when the installation is completed is a Linux desktop that won’t look too different from what we are used to using. Of course, we get the New Human theme with its tasteful chocolate tones in place of the previous default orangey browns. They need to sort out a bug (another of my reports)  where black text is being displayed on dark backgrounds on the default display of drop down menus in Firefox and maybe look into why changing the level of enhancements from Compiz Fusion messes up the display of the workspace switcher in the task bar but it’s fine apart from this.

Otherwise, it’s a case of steady as she goes with OpenOffice 2.4, Firefox 3 and so on. That may change as time goes on OpenOffice 3 looming in the horizon. For some, all this continuity is all well and good but I could foresee comments front some parts that nothing dramatic is happening and that Ubuntu cannot afford to stand still with the advances of Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva and so on. Saying that, I personally like the continuity because it doesn’t mean that my apple cart is going to get overthrown now and again. Indeed, you could say that the whole Linux distribution market has matured very nicely with evolution being the order of the day and I suppose that Ubuntu needs to be seen to be evolving more than perhaps it has been doing.

In summary, it’s early days for Intrepid Ibex but it works well even at this stage. In fact, it is running sufficiently so that I am writing this very post in a Firefox session running on the thing.  It’ll be interesting to see how it goes from here and if any more pleasant surprises are visited upon us. After the “safety first” approach of Hardy Heron, I suppose that Canonical can feel a little more adventurous so we’ll see what comes. In the meantime, Here are a few screenshots below for your perusal:

It was the prospect of having Photoshop Elements going on Linux that got me thinking about working with WINE. The cause of that was Elements’ inability to edit, create and save files to a VMware shared folder. As it turned out, there was more to my WINE adventures than getting Elements working. Because I was in learning mode, those adventures turned out to be messy ones with WINE getting uninstalled and reinstalled a number of times. For the last of these, I forced matters by installing from a DEB package rather than going through Ubuntu’s normal channels. The openSUSE journey was a bit more orderly and that VM option remains if I want to go experimenting more.

Along the way, I got the Windows version of Opera going as a test. When trying out WINE in former times, I never tried installing applications into it like I do now. I don’t know if this was because I hadn’t made an important connection or that wasn’t the way that things used to be. Flushed with the success of Opera, I went further and discovered that Dreamweaver 8 and Altova’s XMLSpy 2007 Professional work without my breaking a sweat. Photoshop Elements was another story and one that I have told before. Apple’s iTunes was another thing that I tried but without success, even with a useful guide on Wine Review; for some reason, I’m having trouble getting the installation to complete successfully. I think that I’ll leave my tinkering at that for now but my general impression is that WINE works well these days, even if there is the odd crash or inexplicable disappearance of an application window. The latter happened with Dreamweaver and XMLSpy and I needed to log off and back on again to clear the slate for further progress.

When you buy a piece of software and get accustomed to its ways of working, it is natural to want to continue using it. That applied to a number of applications when I moved over to Linux in the latter half of last year and one of these was Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 5.0, a purchase made earlier in the year. My way forward was to hang on to Windows by way of VMware. However, Elements fails to edit or save files in the Linux file system accessed through VMware’s shared folders feature. I have yet to work out what’s happening but the idea of using a more conventional networking arrangement has come to mind.

Another idea that intrigued me was the idea of using WINE, the Windows API emulator for Linux. You can get it in the Ubuntu and openSUSE software repositories but the WINE website has more to say on the subject. That’s only the first stage though as you might see from WINE’s Wiki page on Photoshop and its kind. However, their advice is a spot incomplete so I’ll make it more explicit here. You need to run Winetricks from its online home as follows:

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks fakeie6

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks mdac28

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks jet40

The first line flicks a switch to fool Microsoft components to install thinking that they are installing into a Windows system with IE on board. Without this, the rest will not happen. The second installs Microsoft’s native ODBC drivers; Elements will not function at all without these if my experience is any guide. The last step is to add JET support so that Elements’ Organiser can get going. With all of these in place, having a working Photoshop Elements instance under Linux should be a goer. Apart from the odd crash, things seem to be working OK on Ubuntu and openSUSE seems hospitable too. Further experimentation may reveal more.

Update: The WINE Wiki has now been updated (and links back here!). As per dank’s comment, the above lines can be condensed into what you see below:

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks fakeie6 mdac28 jet40

One of the nice things about the world of Linux and UNIX is the availability of multiple workspaces. In Window, you only ever get one and the likes of me can easily fill up that task bar. So the idea of parceling off different applications to different screens is useful from a housekeeping point of view so long as icons only appear in the task bar foe the open workspace; Ubuntu respects this but openSUSE doesn’t, a possible source of irritation.

However, a case can be made that UNIX/Linux needs workspaces more than Windows because of the multi-window interfaces of some of the software applications. The trouble with each of these sub-windows is that an entry appears in the task bar for each of this, creating a mess very quickly. And it can also be an issue working out which window closes the lot.

Examples of the above that come to my mind include GIMP, XSane and SAS. The Windows version of the latter’s DMS is confined to a single application window while the UNIX incarnation is composed of a window each for individual components like program editor, log, output, etc. Typing "bye" in the command line of the program editor is enough to dispatch the GUI. With GIMP, Ctrl+Q will close it down in any window apart from the "Tip of the Day" one that pops up when GIMP is first started. The same sort of behaviour also seems to dispatch XSane too.

Switching form one workspace to another is as easy as clicking the relevant icon in the task bar in all of the UNIX variants that I have used. Switching an application from one workspace to another has another common thread: finding the required entry in the application window menu.

In Ubuntu, I have seen other ways of working with workspaces. In the interface with visual effects turned off, hovering over the workspace icons in the task bar allows you to move from one to another with the wheel of your mouse. Moving an application between workspaces can be done as simply as dragging boxes from one task bar icon to another. Turning on the visual effects changes things, though. It might appear that the original functionality still works but that seems not to be the case: a matter for Canonical to resolve, perhaps?

The visual effects do provide other ways around this though. Keeping all your application windows minimised means that you can run through workspaces themselves with your wheel mouse. Moving applications between workspaces becomes as simple as grabbing the title bar and pulling the window left or right until it changes workspace. Be careful that you do the job fully though or you could have an application sitting astride two workspaces. It would appear that ideas from the sharing of a desktop across multiple monitors have percolated through to workspace behaviour.

Aside (regarding Ubuntu visual effects): I don’t know who came up with the idea of having windows wobble when they’re being moved around but it certainly is unusual, as is seeing what happens when you try prising a docked window from its mooring (particularly when you’re pulling it up from the bottom task bar). The sharper font display and bevelled screen furniture make more sense to me though; they certainly make a UI more appealing and modern.

It’s been a while since I mentioned anything that might be aurally related and then this rears its head. The Xine plugin beloved by the instance of Firefox on my Ubuntu box simply refuses to play ball with the BBC’s Listen Again feature; 6Music shows are what I am trying to catch later. RealPlayer is on the system but Firefox simply refuses to locate it. On its own, it plays live radio from the BBC and Ireland’s Today FM but, unless I need to do some digging, that’s not much use for Listen Again. It may be some hard wiring done by Canonical as part of their packaging of Firefox: might be related to their preference for Free Software. If I can be bothered, I might replace it with the usual version to see if RealPlayer can be picked up: I do seem to remember reading somewhere that this was a possibility…

Yes, I could use one of my Windows VM’s but I have found another way courtesy of openSUSE 10.3. No, I haven’t changed distro but the reason that openSUSE has made a sudden appearance on this blog in recent times has got to do with my acquiring a copy of the latest issue of Linux Magazine. It came emblazoned with a DVD containing both 32-bit and 64-bit variants of openSUSE’s latest version and, wanting to take a look at how KDE appears these days, I knocked up a VM and installed the 32-bit variant thereupon.

Unexpectedly, that has afforded a Linux solution to my BBC Radio Player conundrum. openSUSE’s Firefox instance is able to find RealPlayer once you have it installed. That process involves a spot more work than if it was Free Software: you need to add an extra software repository to YaST (openSUSE’s configuration utility). The breadcrumb trail is YaST -> Software -> Software Repositories and hitting the Add button fires up a wizard that needs the following settings to set things up as needed:

Protocol: http

Server Name: download.opensuse.org

Directory on server: /distribution/10.3/repo/non-oss/suse/

Authentication: anonymous

Once the new repository was set up (I named it Non-OSS), I found the RPM and YaST took care of the rest. So, what started out as an exercise in curiosity has now found a use. Network traffic may cause playback to stutter but I have what I want without once starting up Windows. Sorting out Ubuntu may happen but it is a lesser priority and I don’t want to disrupt my computing environment in any event.

It should have been as straightforward as following the instructions on the openSUSE website but a bug in VMware Tools derailed things on me. The usual procedure would have you starting by selecting Install VMware Tools from the VM menu before popping into the virtual machine to do the rest. Once binutils, gcc, gcc-c++, kernel-source and make are in place, next steps should involve using YaST to install the RPM for you to run the vmware-config-tools.pl script from the terminal.

However, a bug in compat_slab.h puts a stop to any hopes of installing the vmhgfs component. That’s needed if you want to enable the shared folders feature; looking in /mnt/hgfs then would get you to any shared folders Everything else will be there but why miss out on one piece of functionality when it come in useful?

Having found a useful thread on the subject, here’s my way forward: it is as the expected procedure up to the point of installing the RPM. With VMware Tool installation on a Linux guest, you have two options: use RPM as described or use the compressed tarball. The latter seems the better course. Extract the contents into a folder and navigate to that folder. When there go into vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source and extract the file vmhgfs.tar. Proceed into the resulting vmhgfs-only contained wherever you put it and perform the following edit of compat_slab.h:

Change

#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2, 6, 22) || defined(VMW_KMEMCR_HAS_DTOR)

to

#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE <= KERNEL_VERSION(2, 6, 22) || defined(VMW_KMEMCR_HAS_DTOR)

After that, recreate and replace vmhgfs.tar before issuing the following command in the terminal window while in the vmware-tools-distrib directory: ./vmware-config-tools.pl (anything prefixed with "./" picks up the file from the current working directory rather than where system binaries are stored). A kernel compilation will be involved but all of the defaults should be sensible. Hopefully, all will work well after this.

Update: I am left with a number of outstanding issues that I need to resolve. Lack of internet access from the VM is one of them and a constant forgetfulness regarding the nationality of my keyboard (it’s British) might be another. In the interim, I have removed VMware tools until I can spend some time setting these to rights. Internet access has returned and British keyboard layout is being interpreted correctly in the meantime…

Choice is a very good thing but too much of it can be confusing and the world of Linux is a one very full of decisions. The first of these centres around the distro to use when taking the plunge and there can be quite a lot to it. In fact, it is a little like buying your first SLR/DSLR or your first car: you only really know what you are doing after your first one. Putting it another way, you only how to get a house built after you have done.

With that in mind, it is probably best to play a little on the fringes of the Linux world before committing yourself. It used to be that you had two main choices for your dabbling:

• using a spare PC
• dual booting with Windows by either partitioning a hard drive or dedicating one for your Linux needs.

In these times, innovations such as Live CD distributions and virtualisation technology keep you away from such measures. In fact, I would suggest starting with the former and progressing to the latter for more detailed perusal; it’s always easy to wipe and restore virtual machines anyway and you can evaluate several distros at the same time if you have the hard drive space. It also a great way to decide which desktop environment you like. Otherwise, terms like KDE, GNOME, XFCE, etc. might not mean much.

The mention of desktop environments brings me to software choices because they do drive what software is available to you. For instance, the Outlook lookalike that is Evolution is more likely to appear where GNOME is installed than where you have KDE. The opposite applies to the music player Amarok. Nevertheless, you do find certain stalwarts making a regular appearance; Firefox, OpenOffice and the GIMP all fall into this category.

The nice thing about Linux is that distros more often than not contain all of the software that you are likely to need. However, that doesn’t mean that its all on the disk and that you have to select what you need during the installation. There might have been a time when it might have felt like that but my recent experience has been that a minimum installation is set in place that does all of the basics and you easily can add the extras later on an as needed basis. I have also found that online updates are a strong feature too.

Picking up what you need when you need it has major advantages, the big one being that Linux grows with you. You can add items like Apache, PHP and MySQL when you know what they are and why you need them. It’s a long way from picking applications of which you know very little at installation time and with the suspicion that any future installation might land you in dependency hell while performing compilation of application source code; the temptation to install everything that you saw was a strong one. The learn before you use approach favoured by the ways that things are done nowadays is an excellent one.

Even if life is easier in the Linux camp these days, there is no harm in sketching out your software needs. Any distribution should be able to fulfill most if not all of them. As it happened, the only third party application that I have needed to install on Ubuntu without recourse to Synaptic was VMware Workstation and that procedure thankfully turned out to be pretty painless.