I Don’t Like It, But I Am Very Close to Hating Ubuntu

Last night we did get Kubuntu installed, with some special instructions; but then ran into monitor troubles that weren’t solved before we gave up in order to relax a little. As MAL did most of the work last night, I’ll be attempting a reinstall myself, for learning purposes. I’ll also have the monitor fix researched and available on this laptop, so it should be fairly straightforward to accomplish. (What am I saying?!)

Thank you for your offer, Presto; I hope you understand when I say that I hope I don’t have to take you up on it. Wish me luck, I’m about to go in again ...

How did you and MAL get the install to work? Inquiring minds want to know! I hope that you get the remaining issues solved without my help. I'm sure that we can find much more fun things to do when you come out this way than fighting install problems. Best of luck!

I think you’re right—it is a hardware issue of some sort. Editing the boot command and inserting “noapic nolapic” (we also removed “splash quiet”) was what worked. But now I have to manually insert that to boot the machine successfully each time; and I haven’t tried to tackle the LCD monitor challenge yet (working on the graphics card driver first).

This is so freaking frustrating.

Are you familiar with the Vim editor?

If so, to fix the boot command, type this command at a command-line prompt:
sudo vim /boot/grub/menu.lst


and edit the boot command present in the menu entry that you want. Then you won't have to enter the boot command each time you start the machine. to exit Vim, type :wq to save and exit.

Edited to add: I didn't mean that there was anything wrong with your hardware, but that some changes in Kubuntu's graphics drivers are not working properly with your hardware. Some of their changes have improved things for most folks, but caused regressions for others. Unfortunately, you fall in the latter category.

I haven’t used it before, but I was able to successfully mod that file with something else. I have a somewhat working desktop machine again! Woohoo!

The reason I wrote “somewhat” is because I have been unable to get the machine to recognize anything in any USB port, which means I haven’t been able to move my files over from the backup drive. It’s always something.

Did you use the Kate editor? As for the USB problem, have you tried the Kubuntu user forums?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=675596

I don’t recall what I used yesterday, but for today’s adventure I did use Kate. I really like that program—I even use it for coding html pages. It’s much better than the software I’ve tried that is designed for such tasks (Screem is one, if memory serves, and isn’t Bluefish another?).

As for the USB problem, MAL said it’s probably a matter of fleshing out the lean Kubuntu that comes on the live CD. Today’s rant has more details on that adventure.

Sunni, have you tried Quanta? It's essentially Kate with extra tools for editing web pages. I like it a lot. I'm going to use it for creating blog posts, since my connection has been getting too wonky lately to reliably use the web interface.

I’m not familiar with Quanta. But, unless Kate has been substantially changed, I don’t see why I should have two programs that are so similar—I was able to customize Kate’s handling of html documents to my satisfaction. Well, actually, as close as any software that isn’t the original (i.e., non-Java) Arachnophilia seems capable of attaining ...

As I understand it, Quanta actually uses Kate (similar to how a browser might use Kaffiene as a plugin), but adds on many tools useful for creating web pages. It includes such things as previews, link checking, script debugging, CVS management, image map editing, compare tools, etc. etc.

It actually might be more than you need if you just do simple html and don't need or want stuff such as table editing wizards. I do some minimal PHP hacking, so the debugging features can come in handy for me. I'm also a lazy coder, so if I can get Quanta to create some of the code for me, I'm all for it.

Is KDE up and running again, or you still stuck at the command prompt? The best solution to use will depend on this.

Until I borked that install. If you have any suggestions on solving the USB problem, I welcome them. MAL verified this morning that the files are on the backup drive, so it isn’t an issue with that hardware or software.

First, I need a little diagnostic info. When you get a chance, if you have a working internet connection on your machine, type the word "lspci" into a terminal and copy and paste the results into an email, If you could also include the contents of /var/log/dmesg and /var/log/messages it would help a great deal as well.

We’re currently using HughesNet, and they still suck, for the most part. Readers following that second link will note that I stated an intention to switch to another service ... that didn’t happen. In researching our options, MAL found that most other satlink services seem to be equally sucky in some way or other; and of course, if one switches there is invariably a substantial equipment cost, for the dish, etc. Given those parameters, MAL and I decided to stay with HughesNet for the time being.

All that said, I would strongly recommend that if there is another broadband option, try it. We’ve been on DSL and cable modem, and both were far superior to our current experience—even though we’re talkin’ about several years between then and today. If it’s satlink or nothing, do your homework; that includes reading the fine print of the service contract. If HughesNet is typical of the industry (and there’s no reason to think they aren’t), the company will try to screw you over some way, at some point; knowing what you agreed to will help you try to get some satisfaction, or at least see that their new “improvements” are anything but. There’s also some turnover/mergers in this industry, so who you start out with might not be who provides your services a few years down the line.

Make sure you have some idea of your typical bandwidth needs when evaluating plans. If you have several individuals who do a lot of intensive downloading, a basic plan will almost certainly be insufficient for your needs. I think that, with HN’s basic plan, trying to keep up with a Linux OS would be near impossible. We have a midlevel plan and don’t have enough 24-hour bandwidth to do a full upgrade online (HN measures that 24-hour access not by a static 24 hours, but by a rolling 24-hour period, which makes it more challenging to try to figure out if one’s bumping the limit).

If you do get a satlink, make sure you mount the dish on something stable. Ours is currently on a building that does not have a foundation, and there’s a lot of heaving with the ground freezing and thawing ... which means that MAL enjoys seasonal trips up to the roof of this shack, realigning the dish.

Umm ... that’s probably way more than you bargained for, but your questions provided me a good excuse to vent some frustrations. Hope you found some of it helpful.