As you can see I have excluded a few days with Linux, this is due to me not being able to find the original torrent files of the downloads I am currently doing, so I am waiting for them to finish in Windows before I move everything over.

Ok, I ended off with loading up Ubuntu for the first time and then running off to work. I came back early in the morning (Night shift) and proceeded to do my first driver installation in Linux. Nvidia Beta Drivers.

First problem, I did not know what version of Linux I had installed (32bit, 64bit etc). No problem, I have a look around the OS.

$@#^#@%

Ten minutes later I give up and decide to just go ahead and get the 64bit version of the driver, I have a 64bit CPU so…

I go command line and try to run the .run file and gives me an error “Sorry you have the 32bit version!”

$@#^#@%

Download the new version and run it, now I am greeted by an error “You need to be logged in as root to run the driver.” Ok no problem, so I log out, and then realize I never made a root password, I log back in as myself and then find out that my normal user can change the root password (What?). I change it and log in as root. Great! I run the driver again and get told “You need to exit X Windows before you can proceed” X Windows is the GUI. No problem, makes sense for graphics drivers, I remember from the old days that the short cut for that was alt-ctrl-backspace. I press it. The screen goes black and loads up again.

$@#^#@%

I then get pissed off and go to bed, tired and confused.

In hind sight I probably shouldn’t have worked on it while I was so tired as my brain was screwed, but when I woke up I started again and read the official Ubuntu help guide and learnt all about sudo and apt-get.

Linux has always been very centered on root and having root privileges, Ubuntu has tried to do away with that and introduced the sudo command, which runs whatever you want in root mode.

Apt-get is fucking cool, you type what you want, like apt-get nvidia drivers and it goes and downloads the latest version. Sweet.

What is even cooler are the packet management systems, so instead of doing it in the command line, you run a program with a graphical interface, and every single application on the internet database is available for download. Wh00t. I also noticed that I had 200 megs of updates ready to install. (That’s what I get for ignoring all the icons on screen).

From there on it was smooth sailing. Unfortunately not everything can be done via graphical interface, however the help files on the Ubuntu website is amazing and give you line by line code to run, you even start to understand what’ going on after awhile!

At the end of day 2, the graphical side of the OS was complete, with FUCKING AWESOME 3D shite. It really blows you away to see a window burst into flames when you close it. My personal favorite is having all 4 of my desktops (Linux can have multiple desktops) put on a cube, that you can rotate with your mouse scroll wheel.

I also set up a Windows Vista theme which looked exactly like Vista, which was a laugh, but I found the “original” Ubuntu human theme better (I actually installed a 3D transparent theme for Ubuntu called “superhuman”) The GUI is extremely configurable so I have made a desktop environment that I am familiar with (looks like Windows) I have also tried to go one further and get an OS X dock, but this has turned out to be quite hard and I could only get one kinda working. I will try again when I have more time.

After that I was thinking that it was time I start continuing my downloads, so uTorrent was a must! Unfortunately uTorrent has not been released for Linux and I did not feel like using something else, so this was a perfect opportunity to try out Wine, Linux’s Windows emulator. I found the exe and ran it, and it automatically ran using Wine. It was already connected to the web and set up and I could start downloading straight away. What was also cool is that when you minimized it, it went to your tray, and you can add it to automatically start up when you log in. Note that this is a Windows program that I was running.

The other thing I did was install vlc player and watched some porn, confirming it worked correctly. \o/ After that I went back to Windows to finish my downloads which are nearly complete.

So far, I only have a few gripes. The one is that windows some times turn blank, I think this is an issue with the 3D manager, which is a beta, I will probably go to a more stable version. The other problem is that my movies just close when playing full screen, I think this also has to do with the Window manager.

The last is the dock, but I think I will eventually get that right with more time spent on it. Unfortunately any more updates you will need to wait until I get back from Prague!!!

I’m flying tomorrow through Frankfurt and then down to the city, and meeting with my girlfriend the following day. We are going to do horribly obscene things in bed.

Ignoring that, I am really really looking forward to going, it will be the first time I will be in a foreign (language) country, and I have heard Prague is beautiful and have been practicing my Slovak (I know it’s wrong language for the place but my girlfriend is Slovak and it’s close enough… I can order a beer anyway.)

If anyone has a suggestion for what I can do there from the 10th of February till the 21st, that would kick ass! Until I return in 2 weeks! Ta ta!