Mint 10
November 13, 2010 by Steve · Leave a Comment
I have made some adjustments to this “article” I wrote after a particularly venomous email from tlaid@hotmail.com. I would have been happy to edit the “article”, credit the sender, and thereby correct the details that had caused a great deal of outrage, however nothing so constructive was provided. I hope the ammended version is more acceptable.
Linux Mint 10 (“Julia”) has been released, based on Ubuntu 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”). I’ve been running Ubuntu for about 4 years now and for the past couple of years have been running the spin off distribution “Mint“. Linux Mint is composed of many software packages, of which the vast majority are distributed under a free software license (also known as open source). The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. Linux Mint also includes some proprietary software, such as the Adobe Flash plugin, and uses a Linux kernel that contains binary blobs. Linux Mint is funded by its community of users. Individual users and companies using the operating system act as donors, sponsors and partnersof the distribution. The financial support from the community and advertising on the website helps to keep Linux Mint free and open source [taken from wikipedia].
Many hardened linux users can’t stand the site of Ubuntu as it moves more into the Windows world of armchair computing and presents users with a computer they again don’t need to understand the workings of. I’ve flirted with Mandriva, Arch, Fedora, Suse, and Slackware but keep coming back to Ubuntu just for the ease of setup and the canonical repositories. At the moment I often just don’t have the time to go through some of the problems encountered when compiling from source code and hunting down dependencies. This isn’t a distrubution or OS fault – it’s just I don’t have enough understanding to race off and sort everything out, and I don’t have the time to learn more at the moment.
For those who don’t have enough experience of the command line and inner working of their computer, Linux Mint offers an even easier solution than Ubuntu with a nicely tweaked GUI to boot. Mint also has some nice extras of it’s own like Mint menu that puts all your most used applications on the start menu for you like Windows 7. Mint backup also provides archiving and imaging of your OS for when you inevitably break it.
Mint is beginning to move into a debian based distribution and moving away from Canonical. The plans to move Ubuntu to the Unity desktop on Wayland will also push Mint further away from Ubuntu as Mint plans to retain the XServer, so time will tell as to whether Mint stands up on its own. Personally, if I make the move to debian I could be tempted at #Crunchbang’s “Statler” distrubution with XFCE as this lean OS is fast. A rolling distribution of Mint under Debian however could be a good move as, personally I don’t like the 6 month distrubution upgrades. This is what tempted me to Arch, but the lack of canonical repositories drew me back to Mint. I just wanted to get stuff done, and I just couldn’t do it in Arch with my current kung fu level! A rolling debian Mint with the repositories and tweaked interface however could be somewhat tempting. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade is far less painful than fdisk. Also, the potential lack of compatibility between wayland and older xserver applications could mean Ubuntu becomes increasingly incompatible with other linux apps and presents a problem with upgrading and backwards compatiliblity. Conversely, it will also drive forward the implementation of Wayland which might be very good for Linux’ ageing and bloated xserver. It will be interesting to see if Ubuntu becomes a future Apple and splits away from linux like OSX did from BSD, evolving into its own OS or whether it will be a spearhead for the next generation of Linux OS.
So, if you fancy a dip into the world of Linux and want something easy to get you going then take a look at Mint sometime. I plan to drop the training wheels one day, but for now it lets me peddle along and enjoy the scenery. Mint comes with seperate downloads for gnome, KDE, and Fluxbox desktops as well as the debian based build. There are small CD releases with the base install and DVD ISO’s with all the extras.
There is also a much more informed account of Mint’s development over on wikipedia if you want more information.
Jaunty Jackalope
March 27, 2009 by Steve · Leave a Comment
Ubuntu 9.04 – Jaunty Jackalope beta has hit the Canonicle servers. Full release is due at the end of April. I’m going to give the 32bit desktop edition a run out on my laptop over the weekend.
9.04 promises Open Office 3.01 and the new ext4 filesystem which is reporting faster boot up times. No 2.6.29 kernel however as the development team will freeze the feature set before its release. 9.04 will ship with 2.6.28 stable. Ubuntu 9.10 will be shipping with 2.6.30 or 2.6.31… or neither if we’re all credit crunched to oblivion :p
LaTeX
June 11, 2008 by Steve · Leave a Comment
I have been thinking for a while about the best tools to use when writing scientific reports throughout my PhD. Systems Biology combines mathematical modelling with wet lab experimentation. For me, writing equations alongside experimental data is a new experience and I was unsure how to insert this kind of information into an electronic document. There is always Microsoft equation editor, but this didn’t seem to produce the same quality of script as seen in scientific publications. I have recently favored the open source applicaton MathCast for creating equations as it outputs both as images and mathml which makes it quite versatile. I had been aware of LaTex for a few years but had many problems compiling something usable in Windows and had been too lazy to bother learning the LaTex coding to perform tasks that Office could do with a mouse click. I found it difficult to break into the LaTex scene and had rebounded back to Office and my toolbox of open source applications. Recently I have migrated over to Ubuntu and ventured into LaTex again using the synaptic package manager to compile the myriad dependencies for LaTex. This went ok and I got myself a working LaTex environment, however I still couldn’t be bothered to “code” my documents when I could just churn out an office document.
Today I stumbled on Lyx, a WYSIWYM LaTex editor. WYSIWYM is “what you see if what you mean” and utilizes a word processor style interface to plug into MikTex. For new people, idiots, and combinations of the 2 like myself, this enables the user to construct a LaTex document using a minimal understanding of the markup language but without losing any of the capabilities of LaTex.
A comprehensive review can be found here. I have to get my head around structuring a LaTex document, however Lyx provides the “leg up” to begin escaping the comfort blanket of Microsoft Office.
Ubuntu 8.04
May 11, 2008 by Steve · Leave a Comment
No updates in a while due to work commitments. Just a quick post before bed to comment on the latest release of Ubuntu Linux. I have been tinkering with Ubuntu for a couple of years after brief forays into Mandrake, Peanut, and SUSE. I have had a few problems with driver and general compatibility issues between Linux and the rest of the world using MS Windows and stuck to XP. I tried out Ubuntu as it was the first distribution that moved away from supplying the user with 6 CDs containing a myriad of applications all doing the same thing, installing from a single 700mb CD with everything you needed. My course here at Manchester provided an Acer Travelmate 4230 laptop which we have been using for general report writing and more recently mathematical modelling with Mathematica and Copasi. I had a play with various versions of Ubuntu 6 and 7 but could never get it to recognise all the integrated hardware and ended up back with XP again.
Earlier this month I downloaded the latest Ubuntu 8.04 and gave their new Wubuntu windows installer a go as I could have a quick play and delete it without having to re-partition my hard disk. Ubuntu installed alongside XP with a smooth bootloader and ISO image instead of dual boot. I was stunned to find the operating system happily detecting all the integrated intel hardware on the laptop, the widescreen resolution, and even the integrated 3D graphics accelerator to provide the full bells and whistles Compiz Fusion desktop. A week later and I haven’t booted back into XP! The OS migrated all my user accounts automatically from XP and mapped the old partition as a drive within Ubuntu. I downloaded a couple of extra packages like Amorak and Thunderbird and I’m seriously considering waving goodbye to Microsoft for my future work. The speed gained from the Linux filesystem is considerable and the integrated synaptics package manager makes downloading additional software and updates simple.
I feel version 8.04 is a significant step forward for the Ubuntu community and a serious contended as a mainstream desktop operating system. I would seriously recommend anybody who is considering an expensive upgrade to Vista or Apple give it a try before shelling out.
The revolution is here 