TechHui

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I wish I had joined this group earlier, unfortunately I had my own personal install-fest this weekend. I have used Windows my whole life. Not because I have a love affair with Microsoft products, its just what I am used to. I recently bought a little 10 inch laptop which ships with Windows 7 Starter Edition. Starter Edition has an awesome feature - the whole thing freezes every other use. The blue screen of death is basically my screen saver.

 

So after banging my head against the wall on how to install Linux I finally found a link deep in a forum to Linux Live USB Creator and tried Fedora.

 

Now all I really want / need on this machine is python2.5 (app engine requires it), app engine, eclipse and a few plugins. Im still stuck trying to figure out how to get 2.5 on the machine. Linux ships with 2.7 and the software add program has 2.6 and higher. sudo /huh? ./compile? wine? No thank you, I prefer beer.

 

So I thought, myabe Ill try Ubuntu 11.04 hmm....now I cant even find the terminal. I don't know how to use it but at least in Fedora I knew where to find it. Frustrating.

Linux sure doesn't seem to make it easy to install software that isn't in the "Software Center" smells like reverse censorship.

 

Anyway I am going through a little Windows-withdrawals. I will be at your next meeting. In the meantime I have a large list of distributions I can throw on this USB and give a try. Any suggestions? Comments? Methadone?

 

Thanks in advance,

Doug

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Aloha Doug,

You've come to the right place.

First let me ask if you've still got Ubuntu on your laptop? If so, stay right there and take a deep breath.

I use Ubuntu 11.04 Studio... IT ROCKS! I actually use quite a few different distros. Fedora is one of them. CentOS is another. Debian (which is my favorite but, I'm lazy so I use Ubuntu since it's built on Debian and is better supported) :) And several different versions of Ubuntu for different purposes.(Mainly server builds, web, cms, ecm, developer, mail, fileshare, smb, webdav, you get the gist)

 

Anyway back to your "challenges and needs".  In Ubuntu Terminal is located in Accessories directly under the Ubuntu icon (Start Menu for you Windows folks out there) VOILA! There it is.  As long as you have your apt repositories set up properly you should be able to load the programs you need for your purposes. _Now, you may not be able to find in the apt repositories but NEVER FEAR it's out there if you google it. Here's a link I found that may help you out http://jordilin.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/python2-4-python2-5-and-ub...

It's a good article and it'll take some work (aka compiling) on your part but I'm sure you'll have fun digging into it.

 

Give this site a try as well https://launchpad.net/~fkrull/+archive/deadsnakes/+packages

Just use synaptic package manager to help guide you through the process. Even a Windows user can handle this! :)


Good luck and if you have anymore questions feel free to contact me bully@hawaiitechhui.com

 

a hui hou!!!

Doug, in Ubuntu 11.04:

  • Right-click on the "Applications Lens" at the bottom of Unity launcher, you'll get a categorized list of your programs
  • A sub-menu of the Power Off icon (far right of the top panel) is all the system settings & preferences
  • CTRL+ALT+T will open a terminal for you, worth learning this shortcut
  • For additional software, adding a PPA (a repository you choose to trust) find the name of the PPA, then:  From command line do "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:name_of_ppa/ppa"
  • (should also do "sudo apt-get update" afterward).  The software from that PPA should now show up in Software Center just like the rest
  • You can also install software from any .deb file, but you won't get the updates like you will via PPA
AWESOME! thanks for the help guys I got it.
Wow great Unity tips Paul. I wish those were recorded on the unity shortcuts wallpaper I've been using. Particularly right-clicking the application lens to drill down into the menu and the location of the system configuration under the power down menu.

If you want to do some customization to make Unity a little nicer, here are my favorites so far:

  • Add a quicklist to the Home Folder icon.  (I examined the format of this hack and added a link to my Dropbox folder too)
  • Add a quicklist to LibreOffice icon, afterward you can dispense with the unity launchers for individual LibreOffice applications
  • Install a Web Search lens
  • Remove the "global application menu" feature - I hate it as much here as I hate it in OSX.  The command to do so is: "sudo mv usr/lib/indicators/5/libappmenu.so usr/lib/indicators/5/libappmenu.so.old".  (You can always repeat with the last two terms reversed if you want it back.)  Log out and back in afterward.

Oh wow, thanks for the Unity tips. I may give it another try after reading all that. After my perceived inefficiency with it, I went ahead and installed GNOME3 on my Ubuntu system but GNOME3 feels incomplete -- I may try to return to Unity.

 

Ditto to the global application menu feature -- it's completely useless when you focus-follows-mouse turned on.

Yeah, I expected to hate Unity, but have found that I actually like it.  I'm betting it will be even better by 11.11

David Chung said:

Oh wow, thanks for the Unity tips. I may give it another try after reading all that. After my perceived inefficiency with it, I went ahead and installed GNOME3 on my Ubuntu system but GNOME3 feels incomplete -- I may try to return to Unity.

 

Ditto to the global application menu feature -- it's completely useless when you focus-follows-mouse turned on.


And here, someone has now created a GUI for some of the tweaks I mentioned above:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/confity-lets-you-configure-unity...

Revisiting this (it's been a while...) since I recently tried out GNOME3 in its current state. This time, it definitely feels more complete and I'm actually impressed with what's been done with it so far.

In particular, I think they addressed the global-menu + focus-follows-mouse issue. What happens in GNOME3 is that focus doesn't switch until the mouse rests. Thus, you can travel to the global-menu across multiple windows without switching focus.

Of course, one has to use the tweak tool to enable this behavior.

But overall, GNOME3 works really great with my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro!

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