Anthony Hook » Planet Ubuntu

Ubuntu Wisconsin – Friendly Testing

anthony — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:48:38 +0000

You are formally invited to this event put together by Ubuntu Wisconsin LoCo’s very own Ian Weisser (Cheesehead): Help us with Ubuntu Friendly.

Find us today at 9:00CDT (02:00 GMT)
#ubuntu-us-wi on Freenode or the web client

Ubuntu Friendly is the new hardware validation and database client. The application tests your system hardware, and sends a hardware report
back to a database that you can see at http://friendly.ubuntu.com.

If you have ever wished for a compatibility list when shopping for hardware, here’s how the Ubuntu community is building that list.

Requirements: (See the video at http://friendly.ubuntu.com/participate/ )

Ubuntu 11.10 on a laptop (installed to HDD, not in VM)
The ‘checkbox-cli’ or ‘checkbox-gtk’ package
Headphones and Mic (optional)
USB stick, USB HDD, Firewire HDD (optional) – CD-R, Audio CD (optional)

Tonight we’ll run through the tests (20 minutes or so). The goal is to help build that compatibility list AND file bugs to improve the beta. This is an easy activity to fit into your evening plan. It’s fast, easy, and you can do it while watching TV.

Ubuntu Wisconsin Presentation – Success

anthony — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:07:08 +0000

Rick Schwai’s resentation was a great success in Rhinelander! We had 13 people in attendance. My wife and I were happy to attend, and I provided any clarification on questions during the presentation, as well as talked about the Ubuntu Local Community. After, Rick took a survey and interest form, and everyone was able to take one (or a few) free Ubuntu 10.04 LTS CDs

I am looking forward to working with Rick on future presentations in the area, whether I’m able to attend or not. If anyone else in the LoCo is interested in presenting or has any questions, please let us know on the mailing list.

Here are a few pictures of the venue, and Rick’s setup.

Ubuntu Wisconsin on the radio

anthony — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:08:44 +0000

Rick Schwai from our own Ubuntu Wisconsin Local Community had an interview with WXPR regarding his upcoming presentation, “Introduction To Ubuntu.” Above is the sound clip from WXPR, where Rick got a little more than a minute of airtime giving a brief introduction to Ubuntu, giving listeners taste of what they can see on October 3rd. If you’re in the area and find this interesting, we hope to see you there. I’ll be there, with a nice stack of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS CDs to hand out to anyone who attends.

Stop on by:

When: Mon, 03 Oct. 2011 18:30 – 19:30 CDT

Where: Rhinelander District Library

Why: Introduction to Ubuntu

Let me know if you have any questions, and we hope to see you there!

Ubuntu Global Jam – Wisconsin Brainstorm Triage Jam

anthony — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Brainstorm Triage Jam

IRC event in #ubuntu-brainstorm and #ubuntu-us-wi conducted by the Ubuntu Wisconsin LoCo Team.

Sept 3, 2011 1700-2000 UTC (that’s 1200-1500 CDT)

Lean how the various teams and upstream projects interact by triaging Brainstorm ideas.

Meet new people who want to improve Ubuntu, too!

No experience necessary, no coding skills necessary – all training provided. Mentoring provided.

Details

When: Sat, 03 Sept. 2011 17:00 – 20:00 UTC

IRC Channel: #ubuntu-brainstorm, #ubuntu-us-wi

Event Contact: Ian Weisser

Organizing Team(s): Ubuntu Wisconsin LoCo Team

Global Event: Ubuntu Global Jam

New hardware, Sandy Bridge, and Ubuntu.

anthony — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:57:53 +0000

My fiancée and I have decided that we should invest in a new tower computer for various reasons. One primary reason is to use it for multimedia (music streaming to the stereo/home theater, movies, videos, etc), as well as a data server around the house.

In being an Intel fan, I ordered a nice quad-core Intel Core i5 Sandybridge from Newegg for a pretty decent price. It can do nice graphics, if paired with the right motherboard, right? Right! As long as your OS supports it.

I received the parts, pieced the box together (more details to be posted later), and installed Ubuntu 10.10. I did notice, however, that I didn’t have the nice visual effects, and was unable to enable them. Everything just works on linux, right? It turns out, I was wrong.

It turns out I didn’t do all of the research that I should have, and realized that Ubuntu 10.10 didn’t ship with 2.6.37 kernel, Mesa 7.10, and the xf86-video-intel 2.14 DDX driver that is apparently required to run nice Sandybridge graphics. Phoronix has a few nice posts and a quick Google search can turn up information you may need.

To make a long story short, I saw in the release notes for Ubuntu 11.04 Natty 2:

X.org Server 1.10

Alpha 2 includes a new X stack, comprised of XServer 1.10 and mesa 7.10, along with updates to all the major drivers. New features include support for Sandy Bridge graphics, improved 3D support for newer radeon hardware, support for more OpenGL extensions, improved multi-head functionality, and of course many bug fixes.

Excellent. To upgrade to 11.04 (currently in beta, see the release schedule) I simply performed (in a terminal):

$ sudo update-manger -d

and followed along. Note: 11.04 Natty still isn’t finished, so expect issues. I run it on a few different machines to report bugs and test my hardware, and I don’t mind doing it with this hardware.

I have only had approximately an hour to play around with it, and I haven’t tried to play any high-definition 720p/1080p videos yet, but Unity appeared to be screaming fast, and it just appeared better overall. I’ll give an update as I dig deeper into what it can do, and probably some benchmarks that I will run.