Comfortable with Ubuntu like Windows XP

I had mentioned in my post in May titled "upgraded-to-jaunty-jackalope" that my webcam did not work. I was using third party driver ov51x.jpeg for my webcam. After up-gradation, this driver did not work properly. The dedicated site of this driver recommended using gspca driver. I did install this through Synaptic Package Manager. It solved my problem. My Ubuntu is carrying out 100% production jobs for me. In fact, Gnucash in Ubuntu works better for me than in Windows XP. I am using Windows XP and Ubuntu alternatively for my productive works. There are still a few applications like Shockwave player that do not work in Ubuntu. There is a work around for this by using Wine. I am not really bothered about this now. Google Chrome Browser, though a developer version, is working fine. My default browser is Google Chrome.

I mentioned in my last blog that I am trying Fedora 11 as a virtual machine in Ubuntu. GuestAdditions was not easy. I had to dig a lot of sites and tried many suggestions and finally installed GuestAdditions. I was able to get full screen views. I was able to add usb devices too. Share folder worked. However, the sound was scratchy. I tried many a trick to solve. I was unsuccessful. The OS worked work very slowly. Though virtual machines are slow in general, it was dead slow. Updates in Fedora 11 VM were dead slow that gave me a lot of irritation. I tried reinstalling many times, the results were same. I quit using Fedora 11 as a virtual machine. I will try Fedora again only when I get a spare machine for full installation.

All variants of Ubuntu work well as virtual machines in VirtualBox. It is due to good integration of gnome with VirtualBox. I tried other distros also like OpenSuSe. They did not work like Ubuntu in VirtualBox. Now, I am testing beta version of Ubuntu 9.10. This is slated to be released end of this month. Initial impressions are good. Starting is faster though it is working as a virtual machine. I feel this version will make me lean more towards Ubuntu than XP. I find Ubuntu is less and less buggy. I find it is more stable. System recovery, if at all needed, is simple. Its repositories have more free softwares that meet all needs of either personal or business use. As more and more applications are converting to web-based ones and cloud computing is on the rise, OS may be losing its importance. Will Chrome OS is the future? Will it replace Ubuntu? Time only will answer.

Fedora 11 KDE on top of Ubuntu

As I find Ubuntu is getting more and more stable and satisfied. I wanted to try another Linux distro. While trying to try another distro, I also wanted to compare KDE desktop environment as against gnome in Ubuntu. The choice fell on Fedora 11 KDE. As I do not have another machine, I decided to go the virtual route. My choice on virtual application fell on Sun's VirtualBox. The following link provided me the necessary instructions to install Fedora 11 KDE on VirtualBox.

Installing Fedora 11 KDE on VirtualBox 2.2

I installed as per the instructions. I had a hitch while installing. The installation was hanging every time I tried to install the virtual machine. After some digging in the web, I tried a setting change before installing the OS, but after creating the virtual machine. The setting change was "enabling PAE kernel".

Please note that the virtual machine has to be closed and started again for the setting change to take effect. The installation went smooth after this change. There are few issues that need to be addressed. The display driver is not installed properly. USB devices do not get mounted in virtual machine. I am trying to find solutions to all these issues. I have not delved deeply in the applications of Fedora 11 installed by default. One thing that caught my eye instantly was the number of games loaded in basic Fedore 11. A lot of them compared to other applications. My kins would like them. I will write about KDE applications later after trying them out. It may take some time to resolve the issues noted above. I am trying!