Taking a break from Ubuntu
Have you read the past 25 or so entries in this blog?
Once I finally solved all my issues with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, I decided to start the upgrade path to version 9.10.
I wanted newer applications. I needed better hardware drivers.
But especially with 9.10, nicknamed Karmic Koala, I've had to deal with too many issues. I'm tired.
And aside from the laptop on which I'm running Ubuntu beginning its own hardware death spiral, its CMOS battery long dead, LCD screen sprouting a half-dollar-sized black blotch and taking the lower right half of the screen with it, I have what I always seem to have.
X issues.
Finally things seemed to be going well. A kernel update took my shutoff of kernel mode setting out of /boot/grub/menu.lst and I could miraculously run X with the aforementioned kernel mode setting, no xorg.conf file needed.
Then an Xorg update rolled in, and suddenly the screensaver, if let run too long, would render the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop inoperable. The machine was running, but the mouse and keyboard were dead to it.
Even returning ctrl-alt-backspace X-killing had no effect. (Note to self: Even though X works with kernel mode setting, could KMS be responsible for the keyboard/mouse death?)
I enjoy debating the removal/inclusion/reimagining of the GIMP, F-Spot, Pidgin, Empathy, Mono and Ubuntu One as much as the next blogorrhea-striken geek, but as Linux Outlaw Fab and Jermaine of "Flight of the Conchords" say, it's business time
I didn't know exactly when it would happen, but with 8-year-old laptops running on glue, various varieties of tape and other household sundries, it pays to have a backup.
And this post comes to you from that backup, the "other" Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101, which has had a fully encrypted LVM installation of Debian Lenny — the project's current stable distribution — on it for a number of months.
Sure, this Toshiba hasn't had working sound almost since I first grabbed it out of a pile of to-be-recycled laptops in various states of dismemberment.
And its space bar is a little flaky.
And the display's inverter is intermittent, requiring frequent manual presses of the lid-closing switch to bring the display back.
But the X issues that plagued my Intel-running laptops since Lenny was in Testing have long since been mastered (again, thank you Arch Linux Forum members, who've given me many an xorg.conf hack, most of which have worked).
I've been reluctant to switch laptops because I'm always midstream. I have over 2 GB of POP mail in Thunderbird on the Ubuntu laptop and another 3 GB or so of other files.
Sure, I could install Debian (or Slackware or fill-in-your-favorite) over Ubuntu, but I'm not yet ready to take that step.
I can and probably will update my rsynced backups in Ubuntu and move everything over to this Debian Lenny machine.
I didn't think it was "ready" for my work flow. The biggest problem is that I've started using Audacity, and that won't go so well on a laptop with no sound.
But otherwise I've got Iceweasel (which sends its name out to the Webby world as "Firefox," as one of my SAAS applications requires), I'll bring the mail from Thunderbird to Icedove (although the new year ahead is as good a time as any to start piping my mail through Gmail and leaving it in the cloud).
I have Flash installed, which I need semi-frequently. Same for Java. And I'll need to add MP3 support. Even if I can't hear the files, every once in awhile I have to verify that they'll play.
I've been using gThumb as my main image editor. Yes, it's that good. And luckily gThumb, not Ubuntu's favored (and much less capable) F-Spot, is in the Debian Lenny default desktop install.
All the rest of the GNOMEish tools I use in Ubuntu are here. Gedit (which is really growing on me and would grow even more if there was a keyboard shortcut to change the case of letters), Epiphany (again, I've really enjoyed using the Webkit version in Ubuntu, but Epiphany is still a great browser with Gecko), the GNOME terminal, the Nautilus file manager, Synaptic (although I've pretty much abandoned it for Aptitude, especially with Ubuntu's cryptic method of having an Update Manager window "magically" appear at seemingly random times).
I finally figured out how to get my Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter to work using the rt73 driver.
NetworkManager, despite not being the newer and greatly improved version I first saw in Ubuntu 8.10, is working fine.
I have gFTP, even though I've started using Nautilus for FTP. Yeah, I don't have OpenOffice 3.1 for the occasional .docx file sent my way, but I've got plenty of other machines that do have OO 3.1.
I need the basics to work. And I need them to keep on working. I can't keep fixing things every time there's a software update.
Nowhere does the phrase, "Your mileage may vary," apply more than in the world of Linux and BSD operating systems.
But in the case of this hardware and my workflow, it's Debian time.
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Just in case you find you would really like some newer applications which aren't available from the backports and don't want to bother compiling them... I have been using the nix package manager on top of a beautifully stable Debian Lenny system for a couple of months and it's working out great. I have Firefox 3.5, Emacs 23 and Inkscape 0.47 (which was just released) installed via nix. I notice OpenOffice 3.1 is available too.
It seems to be an interesting system in its own right, but the nice thing for me is that it can install whatever it needs for a particular application and it keeps it totally separate from the rest of the system. It will let you rollback to earlier versions and fancy things like that but anything I have installed so far has worked fine, and I haven't messed any more with it.
Other similar approaches I've heard of are using Gobo Linux recipes or OpenPKG. I haven't tried either of them.
http://nixos.org
I really understand your frustration. But I can also understand that Ubuntu stops supporting completely broken hardware to make the lives of the majority of users easier.
Every Toshiba laptop I could put my hands on, was a piece of crap from the Linux point of view. The BIOS delivers information that only Windows can handle because it's all broken. The table containing the relevant information (DSDT) won't even compile without hundrets of errors and warnings with the standards-compliant Intel iasl compiler. The LCD displays don't send any information whatsoever to the graphics card about supported resolutions and stuff like that. So the laptops only run really well with all the custom tailored windows drivers. As soon as you install a generic driver made for the very same hardware -> BSOD.
As a distributor you have to make a choice. Do you want to support such practices? Or do you want your users to be able to just connect a projector to their laptops and use it right away (i.e. xorg autoconfiguration).
I haven't seen those bad DSDTs for quite a while, so I think it is a safe choice to go for auto-configuration. If you have such old and (technically) broken hardware, you're probably forced to stick with old software. On the other hand I have lots of non-broken hardware that runs karmic and debian testing just fine.
As I see it, the problem isn't so much Toshiba as it is Intel video hardware from this era, of which there's a whole lot out there.
Additionally, there is a segment of hard-core Linux users who buy new PCs, wipe Windows from them and install their favorite Linux distribution.
But there are even more people who have an older computer that for one reason or another runs like crap on whatever version of Windows it happened to ship with. And they want to extend the machine's life, or they want to try Linux, and they get a Ubuntu CD, or whatever distro they've chosen, and they install it on this older hardware - PCs between 4 and 8 years old, let's just say for the sake of argument.
And if they have all kinds of problems, that's it for their foray into Linux.
And I'm telling you, I have a very good feeling that there are more people using Linux with 5-year-old computers than there are with new ones.
So if the Linux kernel or Xorg thinks it's a good idea to cut off Intel video from the past 5-10 years, that will go a great deal toward killing desktop Linux with the same stroke.
Even if autoconfiguration doesn't work (and for me until very recently it's actually gotten better), at least there should be better resources as to how to deal with things like kernel mode setting in distros that use it and how to craft the right xorg.conf file for all video hardware out there.
There are plenty of geeky types who haven't yet made the move to free OSes who would -- and who would do so with a lot less pain if there was more information out there on how to make their video/sound/suspend-resume working.
I recognize that it's a good idea, when buying/acquiring equipment to look at what the developers on your favored project use and get that. That's why IBM Thinkpads work so well in FOSS OSes -- developers like 'em, use 'em and code for them. The detailed documentation IBM supplied really helped this whole endeavor, both in figuring out how to code for them and for users taking them apart and putting them back together.
In that respect, it's a good idea to get a Thinkpad, even a new one by Lenovo.
But what other current computers work great with Linux and the BSDs? It woulud be nice to know.
Even some of the Dell netbooks that worked great with Ubuntu 8.04 didn't have proper drivers when upgraded, so that's a Linux preload that didn't work out so well.
I'm very much open to buying a new computer(s) with an Ubuntu preload, but the reality is that preloads just aren't happening yet on such a wide scale. I wish it were different, and I hope things change over the next few years.
Hell, there are even a few Solaris preloads out there. And with all the hardware at my disposal, I can barely get a box to even boot OpenSolaris, let alone actually run it.
I get what you are saying. It is good to explore other options. I have been a loyal K/Ubuntu user for over three years, but there are stresses in our relationship. The decision to move to Plymouth and Nouveau with Lucid could sever our relationship. If I wanted a 2D card then I would have bought one or use Fedora which cripples the card because it uses Plymouth and Nouveau. That is not a path that I want to go down.
I may try Debian, but am not much for their rolling release model or Debian stale as it is sometimes called. I like the aggressiveness of K/Ubuntu, but am not in agreement with some of the decisions being made.
With over 300 distributions you would think that there would be no problem finding an alternative, but for me K/Ubuntu is that good. It has everything that I want. Except they want to change a good thing and make it worse for Nvidia users.
I have used Fedora 12 and it is not worth having Plymouth and to be forced to use Nouveau. Nvidia proprietary drivers do not wok with KMS. The choice then becomes K/Ubuntu in 2D or another distro with compositing. It should be interesting to see what Canonical does if there is a backlash as I suspect there will be.
My plan for now is not to upgrade to Lucid. I have tested K/Ubuntu from alpha to final for every version since Feisty, but Karmic may be my last Canonical release as things are shaping up.
Things are going a bit better for my Ubuntu 9.10 laptop today. I'd love for some calm amid the storm of fail.