upgraded to ubuntu 12.04

after a lot of waiting time, i upgraded to ubuntu 12.04, lts. the process wasn't smooth at all since my old system's cdrom doesn't work. i had to upgrade to 11.10 (about 1gb of download) and then 12.04 (1.2gb of download).

plus, i am now on unity. it's a bit slow i'd say then macbuntu on 11.04. i am running ubuntu 2d as my old hardware shouldn't be kept processing on just the visual effects. i did google tweaks for ubuntu 12.04 as i wasn't happy with the performance i was getting.

i,
1. installed jupiter (to switch between cpu processing modes)
2. tried xfce but it crashed a few times.
3. disabled unnecessary services and startup items.
4. there's something called preload, i installed that too.

still the boot up time is about a minute. it's kind of stable after that. chromium seems to run stably fast. firefox runs like a charm. libre office is continuing to disappoint me.

i have some excel 2007 files about 2-5 mb in size. it hangs! literally while trying to open them. looks like no one likes big excel files. just tried uploading to google docs drive. server keeps rejecting them.

even on a core i3 2nd gen windows 7 with office 2010 system, those files make computer run for mommy! maybe those files should be exported as csv and imported into mysql.

here's a screenshot to tell you what i am dealing with.

ubuntu 12.04 unity 2d desktop

app review: digikam

as phil pointed out in comments to my earlier review of shotwell, it urged me to check out digikam. as you must be already aware, it's one-click install with ubuntu software center. so, i installed digikam ;)


it has a nice little picture splash screen for launch. after launch, on first startup, it asks a lot! well, that's needed to know you better. the options are self-explanatory.

digikam launching

where images are?

Preview mode options!

i've skipped some screenshots to keep it brief. there were other options too which i don't use, regarding raw images and tooltips. you can check out for yourself when you install digikam.

Final screen of fist time configuration of digikam.

as you can notice, it's a heavy program and takes time to load. though it was initially scanning for images in the defined picture folder,

digikam: looking for images in folder.

it still took time loading previews.

digikam program window.

frankly, my experience with digikam wasn't as smooth as shotwell or any other photo manager. it looked a bit heavy on my old hardware. there are a lot of import/export modules in digikam which is a good thing if you have your photos scattered all around. however, i think people generally use one or two such services only. i didn't test importing and exporting.

there aren't simple image editing tools. i might be wrong here, but it looks like it has image editing capabilities derived from gimp. though i use, shotwell for managing photos and gimp for editing them, this is a one package deal. 

digikam's image editor

the only weird deal here is the spike in cpu usage. i know my hardware is little bit 6 year old, it shot it to 100% while doing this calculation. it's a nice way which i like to present the changes it is going to take. i really liked it. but the time it took to compute that is my concern. gimp has a progress bar which digikam misses.

here's my cpu usage around this filter. you can notice the usage. don't worry about my internet connection, i wasn't downloading anything ;)

final words. 

digikam offers a nice package of tools and somewhat nice ways to manage your photos based on tags and others. it also has fuzzy search to search for images. for those who like to do everything inside a single software, this would be a great deal. however, it lacks auto-grouping of images (like shotwell does). it offers a great set of import/export options, covers almost everything. however, the only thumbs down from me is cpu utilization. even for browsing photos, this was kind of not upto the mark. i feel bit sluggish. user interface is great however bit complex if you are just going to manage photos.

ubuntu on android

this post is not about how to get ubuntu running on your android phone.

I recently purchased a android phone known as motorola photon/electrify. the common thing about ubuntu and android is kernel that they share.

I'm writing this post from blogger app on my phone which is going to be my platform for few days now.

I still use my old laptop with ubuntu running smoothly and recently I rooted my phone using ubuntu only. cheers to developers making this available.

there hasn't been much changes to my laptop as I haven't upgraded to precise pangolin yet. I'm not planning in near future.

Thanks for reading my blog and hitting 1k counter ;-)

2 days to go! precise pangolin!

we are just two days away from next long term support (lts) release of ubuntu 12.04 aka 'precise pangolin'. check the wiki here.

ubuntu 12.04 comes with major updates from ubuntu community, kernel upgrade to 3.2 being the major one. also, canonical is trying to push unity which seems controversial to many (i still use macubuntu), also the 'hud' instead of menu would take some time to settle. change is good, but it takes time.

like earlier, i'm not going to upgrade to it, the day it gets released. i'll wait for a month and half for others to review it. since, i don't want to end up like earlier.


till then, happy compubunting! (yeah, i see the red line below it)

learning guitar, the ubuntu way!

i recently bought a new acoustic guitar from gb&a and i am planning on learning it. i know it's a long term commitment like my other commitment to use open source software. apparently, i didn't purchase any tuner that usually people buy.

i opened ubuntu software center and typed 'guitar' and hit enter. to my surprise, it listed multiple applications that comes free to use and easy to install.

i installed some on my laptop. i didn't play out much with the apps yet however, i think it would require me to plug-in using some jack which i would have to buy. you can't escape from purchasing hardware! ;)

tuxguitar is a simple application which is for notes and playing them. i think it would be a great app to practice notes and playing when i learn to play.

there's another application gtkGuitune, which doesn't launch well from gui menu. it has to be started from console by typing
aoss gtkguitune

i really didn't get much time to play with these but as i move along, i'll keep you and this blog updated. this is a new venture into learning guitar with the help of linux (ubuntu) and those guitar leaning videos.


happy ubuntuing!

mounting .iso files in ubuntu

i recently downloaded an .iso file for some preparation kit. i wasn't aware how to use it. in windows, i used to use some virtual drive management software or some cd burning software to have the contents.

apparently, this was the first time i was dealing with .iso file on ubuntu (linux). i was going to extract it to view its contents, that was the plan. however, mistakenly i double clicked on the file and to my surprise, it got mounted as a cd. no software, no special procedure, nothing!

the .iso file

after, i double clicked it, it got mounted. to un-mount, simply right click, select 'unmount drive'.

the .iso file mounted automatically by ubuntu

i guess, guys at canonical/linux community are putting a great effort building some small but powerful understanding into the core os, so that linux is no longer seen as 'geek only' os.

good effort guys. go ubuntu!

Why this slowdown?

i've been not able to post something to this blog lately. the reason is, i'm quite fixed and happy with the setup that i've got with ubuntu working on my system. as i'm using it daily without any issues..

we tend to get familiar with the system and system gets to know you (that's what's expected). i really didn't play around with new software installation or settings. however, things are working great for me. i'm enjoying it more than my earlier os, because it's awesome. 

even the font looks awesome and crisp and clear on it. i never saw my screen so beautiful earlier.

way to go folks. ubuntu rocks!