Happy Holidays

I'm on vacation. See you in the New Year...

Too many cooks...

I'm still moving forward with Kubuntu, but I haven't fully committed yet. I had been doing some synchronization tests with my Treo, and at one point my calendar and todo list got wiped out. I was able to get them back from Windows/Outlook. So far I haven't tried to sync with kpilot/Kontact since that mishap, but I think I'll try it soon.

Over all I like Kontact as a replacement for Outlook. In addition to all the features I was used to from Outlook, Kontact also includes a news reader and something called Akregator, which provides a news reader like interface for RSS feeds. It's pretty nice for keeping up to date with the latest developments on the Ubuntu community sites as well as news sites like Google News and SlashDot.

There are a few other KDE applications I'm starting to like. One is Kopete, which is an Instant Message client. It supports all the major formats (Yahoo, MSN, AIM, IRC, etc.). I suppose it's pretty similar to Gaim. I also like the default music player/manager, Amarok. It has a pretty good interface as well as some interesting bells and whistles. I think I need to play around with it some more.

I have had a few problems with the KDE tools. One problem is the System Setting tool does not allow me to use administrator mode. This means I can't do much as far as managing system resources through the GUI. The Adept Manager (package manager) does not seem to have a way to refresh the packages after I change the repository settings. I have to quite the tool, do an 'apt-get update' then run the tool again. Fortunately I don't change the repository settings very often. Finally, the wireless management is not the best. I wasn't able to use the default tool, so I downloaded wifi-radar. I can't seem to launch wifi-radar from the menu interface. I have to run it from the command line. So far I don't have any wifi indication on my system bar either. Finding and enabling new networks is a little more troublesome than under Windows.

I still may revert back to Ubuntu and try using kpilot for synchronization. I'm not sure if I would pick Evolution or Kontact for email and such. I guess that's another problem with Linux, there are too many choices. It would be nice if the open source community would band together to back one key application in each area, but I guess too many cooks spoil the broth...

Kubuntu

So I've installed Kubuntu, which is the KDE version of Ubuntu. I've installed the 6.10 version, so I can get the wireless card working. I'm also using kpilot (instead of gnome-pilot) and it seems to be working with my Treo and it syncs to Kontact, which is the KDE mail and PIM suite. I think kpilot works with Evolution as well, but I think I'll try Kontact for a bit. I'm even posing this using Konqueror, the KDE web browser! Maybe I'll manage to switch to Linux after all...

Starting small

I have a lot of ideas on the direction I want to go with regards to the whole open source movement, but first I need to start small. I want to move myself off of a MS platform and on to a Linux based platform. I hope to keep a similar set of functionality, which primarily include:

• Email, contacts, calendar, task list and memos (Outlook)
  
• Simple spreadsheets (Excel) and formatted text documents (Word)
• Synchronization with my Palm Treo 650 (Palm Desktop/HotSync)
  
• Outlook data: contacts, calendar, tasks and memos
• DocsToGo data: spreadsheets and formatted text
  
• Multimedia (e. g. MP3, DivX, CD ripping)
  
• Image management and posting (from my Canon EOS 10D and Powershot S3 IS to my gallery)
• Virtual Machine (VMWare)

Some other applications that I may need include presentation editing (PowerPoint), project management (Project), video editing, virtual machine and torrent client.

My initial choice for an OS was Ubuntu, which is based on the Debian Linux kernel and GNOME window manager. It's really easy to install, set up and maintain. However, I'm having some issues with getting it to work with my laptop and other accessories.

My primary computer at the moment is a Dell Inspiron 600m. It includes a built in Dell TrueMobile 1400 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI card. It seems that this card is based on a Broadcom chip set which has no direct Linux support. Some Linux drivers are in the works, but for the moment, it seems like the common method is to use ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers. So far I have not been able to get this to work on Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), but there is a nice script which I have used successfully with Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft).

Problem solved, right? Not really. Unfortunately, I can not synchronize my Treo 650 using Edgy. It worked with Dapper, but apparently some timing issues have cropped up on the Edgy release of gnome-pilot, the underlying Palm synchronization software. When I try to sync my Treo on Edgy it consistently resets the PDA!

There's a newer version of gnome-pilot which claims to fix the reset problem, and I have been able to download an build i t on Edgy. It even manages to identify my Treo correctly, however it seems I have lost a lot of sync conduits including contacts, calendar, memos, and todo (the main ones I care about). Ultimately I want to be able to sync with Evolution, which seems like a pretty good replacement for Outlook. I could go with Thunderbird, but I have become accustom to the nice integration between email, calendar, contacts, etc.

So now I can either keep working on fixing gnome-pilot/Evolution under Edgy (or fix the wireless card under Dapper), search for a different Linux installation that works with both the wireless card and Treo, or wait for the Feisty Fawn release of Ubuntu (which will not be final until April). At the moment, I have sadly returned to Windows...

Geek Valhalla

I'm starting this blog to talk about a path towards a nerd utopia. A place where the code warrior looks forward to going after a long life of battle versus the Evil Empire. Where the human community rises above corporate domination. An attempt to lead the masses to the land of open source, wikis, and social networking. Geek Valhalla.