She says "horror badger bat bite!"

[reddragdiva]

The new laptop has arrived! Packed in a very nice lightweight Dell bag. It's another N410c. P-III 1.2 GHz (old was 1 GHz), 512MB memory (old was 768MB; I'll move the DIMM some time), 30 GB hard disk (old was 20 GB). The screen has two bad dints that shine bright; if they get too annoying I can change the screen. The left mouse button needs a bit of attention too. But I'm still very pleased.

I've installed the complete Breezy Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu package sets and set it to boot to kdm defaulting to KDE. (Though Xfce's theme is so cute and I might put it on the 560X.) I'm playing my Durutti Column collection on it as I write this and redcountess and arkady try to work out Gaelic and Celtic words with an electrical feel to name a cyberpunk elf doll with.

I did have a bit of fun getting it installed. I wanted to try a Dapper Drake preview, because I figured my whining about Ubuntu's fit and finish would be 100% more likely to have any effect if I worked to report a bucketload of bugs before the release. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to want to work with my wifi card (NetComm NP5430, Prism GT ISL3890 chipset). I tried the Kubuntu Dapper 20060309 daily ISO and the card worked on install, but not on reboot. Then I tried Breezy then dist-upgrade, and that didn't work on reboot either. I suppose I should write a proper bug report.

I'm much better today than yesterday and might even be fit for B-Movie tomorrow, but a rest might be a better idea.

Comments

[shamus9999.livejournal.com]

"work out Gaelic and Celtic words with an electrical feel to name a cyberpunk elf doll with."

Feckin Eedjit?

I'm glad you're feeling better. I feel like I'm starting to come down with The Crud here. I just took a decongestant to clear up my sinuses a bit.

I just added Kubuntu desktop to my Ubuntu 5.04 installation yesterday evening. I tried updating to 5.10 via the Synaptics package manager but it didn't seem to take. I'll try again using apt get at a command prompt (but must first find out why it tells me "apt: no such command or file name". Probably a wonky path statement in my profile.

[reddragdiva]

Heh. Yeah, even Ubuntu is subject to the fallacy of graphical computing. Edit sources, apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade is the only way to live.

[lithiana.livejournal.com]

did the old one get repurposed, then, or is this just an incremental upgrade? (i'm sure i could work this out from your previous posts, but i'm eternally confused by the plethora of laptops you seem to own...)

[reddragdiva]

I bought an N410c and was very happy indeed. I took it to Whitby with me for New Year and dropped it on the floor one morning and it stopped working. I stripped it down and discovered a coil had come off the board. I soldered it back on but it still doesn't work. So I bought another one and am now on the lookout for a broken N410c with a working system board.

I am also stalking laptops on eBay for Arkady, specifically a Thinkpad T23, and twice I've missed a fantastic deal because I was pissing around with Wikipedia shite. Which serves me right for Wikiholicism.

[lithiana.livejournal.com]

hmm, a compaq... not tempted by a thinkpad yourself? at least IBM will gladly sell you replacement parts for anything you could possibly break :) (including new system boards..)

[reddragdiva]

Yeah, and you'll pay and pay! Compaq second-hand and spares-and-repairs, particularly for corporate laptops that were made by the zillion, are really not a problem.

I find Compaqs a hell of a lot easier to work on than IBMs; they're both extremely well documented, but you can tell the DEC hardware guys took over the hardware design and made machines the beleaguered PC hardware tech will love. And I am so glad HP basically chucked their own PC lines and stuck with Compaq's.

[reddragdiva]

And specifically, Arkady wants a Thinkpad because she is familiar with Thinkpads the way I am with Compaqs. She's also worked closely with Dell Latitudes and is a fan.

I've been seeing all manner of deals on eBay and have seriously been considering some of the stacks of Compaq Armada M700 that have been showing up. I had one as my work machine at Ericsson five years ago and know precisely how very nice they are. The N410c is two models after the M300 I had as my next laptop there.

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

Uuuummmm.... if it makes any difference, I'll be wearing my second hand new corset....

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I fully endorse this product and/or service.

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

Did you enjoy your preview copy then?

[damerell.livejournal.com]

It was very... um... perky.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you're back to your normal usual happy self, then:). That is good.

Maybe see you tomorrow at B-Movie.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

I'm intending to show up for the earlier part of B-Movie (but taking a late train home).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Though Xfce's theme is so cute and I might put it on the 560X.

Apart from the speed of the damn thing, I think you're right about XFCE's theme. Certainly one of the main "selling" points.

[reddragdiva]

Particularly for rattie fans!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

[ickle-yuki.livejournal.com]

Is the wifi card built in? if not, then consider swapping it for a rt2500 chipset based card, ime they work flawlessly with Ubuntu. Least mine does on my crappy old Compaq Presario 1200xl222 which is slowly dieing... the battery died, and now the trackpad/buttons have, and the screen hinges... no money to replace it tho, bah.

[reddragdiva]

If you have an IBM floppy, you can have an ancient Thinkpad 560X if you like. Hopelessly underpowered, but very nice keyboard ;-)

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

I would really like to try out Ubuntu and am currently downloading the live CD iso.

However, maybe you can answer me some questions:
Is it easy to set up a wireless connection with your router to work with the laptop which is running Windows XP? I couldn´t get this to work with Knoppix previously.

Can I still use programmes like Paintshop Pro and WS_FTP for example? And no, I´m not interested in using alternatives that are just as good - I need my various graphics/web design software on a daily basis (for work *and* pleasure) so I don´t have time to learn a whole new programme from scratch).

Oh, I have more questions, but can´t think of them right now. When you have a minute, maybe you can email me with the answers, please. :D

[reddragdiva]

Probably the second question is the killer: if you want to run Windows programs, you need Windows. Ubuntu can include WINE, which sort of runs some Windows programs a bit with a lot of kicking, which you really really don't want to bother with. So if you must have those applications, you need Windows to run them on.

The paint program included is the Gimp, which has a very nice Windows version. So you could learn that on Windows ;-)

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

I tried the Gimp and it´s good, but Paint Shop Pro 9 is better, and I can get around it very quickly and do what I want straight away. It took me years to learn inside out as I know it now, so you can imagine that I don´t want to spend weeks/months learning a new programme.

So I guess I´m stuck with Windows. For now. If only I had enough time to learn all this shit, life would be much easier. But right now I´m stuck in work, plus second and third jobs on the side (need the money). Also, the fibro concentration problems are a killer for trying to learn shit. Learning Spanish is bad enough already, but I think I´m getting on with that rather okay-ish. I should prolly be fluent in about 10 years´time at this rate, heh. ;)

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

Oh, and THANKS for your reply! :D

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

Ah! But I had a clever idea, me. :D

My laptop is basically identical to my PC with the same programmes installed and running. Only diff is that I can store much more data (movies and music in particular) on my 200 GB HD on the PC. So I could try/install Ubuntu on my PC and of course keep all the usual programmes on my *laptop* and then use my laptop for work (I prefer working on my laptop anyway because the keyboard is nicer to type on and it doesn´t freeze up ever like my PC does).

That´s one way of doing it I guess! :D

[reddragdiva]

That's a good idea :-)

Ubuntu is ridiculously easy to set up. Have a play with the live CD and see how you go.

One problem with movies and so forth: Ubuntu does not include common formats for legal reasons. (the "restricted" formats.) So it's a small amount of fiddling to get them set up.

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

But it plays things like Flash, QT, Real and WM files in the browser/Firefox, right?

I watch all my movies on the laptop anyway because the screen is much more flexible for tilting for the best possible picture. :)

So how about wireless? My PC is connected to a router and my laptop has Centrino tech.

[reddragdiva]

No, not without a bit of kicking. The problem here is legal rather than technical. I'll try to dig up the how-to guides on getting this stuff to work. But no, it doesn't work out of the box.

Wireless mostly works. I think there is just recently a proper Centrino driver set for Linux. But I've yet to see a wireless card that didn't Just Work.

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

Oh ok ta. Well, I´ll give it a try with the Live CD and see how I get on. I know where to come with questions though! ;)

[reddragdiva]

Oh, definitely! I've been heartily recommending Ubuntu to people who know what they want to do with their computer, but are goddamn sick of Windows' flakiness and haven't the cash to buy a Mac, which is both rock-solid stable and incredibly usable. Also, if you do want to do a proper install, check the general instructions on my Ubuntu page.

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

I named the laptop tart: she's small, cute, friendly, versatile, gets around, has lots of interfaces, does USB on both sides, is keen to get into everything, was set up to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu and she has underwear (a base unit) but doesn't like wearing it because it's annoying and gets in the way.

That made me giggle. Will have to bookmark that link when I get home. :)