I get asked this alot, and as I’m sitting here in Santa Fe, in the Hilton watching my girlfriend fight to the death with her XP laptop, I thought I’d share my thoughts.

The scenario we are in right now is a pretty amazing turn of events from just recently. I’m sitting here with effortlessly connected wireless doing whatever I want with Ubuntu on my HP laptop, and she’s:

• struggling to see connections with her Belkin connectino manager
• struggling to connect to the same one as me
• rebooting and having to wait for Norton or McCaffee ( I can’t watch ) to allow her to get to her work
• trying to work out why Outlook won’t let her write in an email that she wants to send
• Oh.. it just crashed!!!

So, here’s my take on it.

You should buy a Windows machine..
never. You just shouldn’t. Yes, there is the argument that they are so much cheaper than macs, but you are just too special a person to put up with the grief.

You should install Linux when..
1) When you are feeling adventurous. The thing with a distribution like Ubuntu (a good choice for a first taste of linux) is that there is a very good chance that out of the box it will work, and do what you need - but there is so much more it is capable of, that it’s easy to wander into the world of the very very cool stuff - and in that world you need a bit more gumption. That might just mean the ability to google something and follow the steps, even when they seem really complicated, but you have to have that sense of adventure.

2) If you have an old piece of hardware that you don’t think should sit on the shelf. Linux can very easily install on something that has died the death with Windows and be a very useful extra machine for surfing, email etc.

You should buy a mac..
.. if you are not going to use Linux. Simple as that. Do yourself a favor.. don’t put up with Windows anymore.

Sure, Macs are not perfect, and they are expensive.. and from seeing my mac buddies luck, I’d say buy Apple Care, because they are no more resliant than the average PC, but find me a mac user who wishes they hadn’t made the switch.. it’s a no brainer.

‘nuff said.

gedit is Textmate for Linux

I’m a recent convert to gedit for my rails development after reading a digg article about how to make gedit act like Textmate. Well I’ve never used textmate, but after just a short spell of using some textmate like features, I’m sold too.

Gemini

One of the two plugins that I’ve grown to love is Gemini by Gary Haran for the auto-insertion of closing tags.

I like it, but it also drove me nuts in it’s default form, in that it auto completes the single apostrophy - fine in code, but if you are jumping back and forth between code and text creation then this is really annoying. Words like “doesn’t”, “hasn’t”, “don’t” etc. all kick off the closing quote - not ideal.

Removing and adding rules to Gemini

The beauty of Open Source is you can change it. If I knew Python, what I should really be doing is contributing with a “configuration” screen for Gemini, but I don’t - so I’ll just hack it.

To remove the single quote rule, open the file:

/.gnome2/gedit/plugins/gemini.py

and search for

“class Gemini:”

  start_keyvals = [34,  39,   96,   40,   91,   123,  60]
  end_keyvals   = [34,  39,   96,   41,   93,   125,  62]
  twin_start    = ['"', "'",  '`',  '(',  '[',  '{',  '<']
  twin_end      = ['"', "'",  '`',  ')',  ']',  '}',  '>']

and change to:

  start_keyvals = [34,   96,   40,   91,   123,  60]
  end_keyvals   = [34,   96,   41,   93,   125,  62]
  twin_start    = ['"',  '`',  '(',  '[',  '{',  '<']
  twin_end      = ['"',  '`',  ')',  ']',  '}',  '>']

Restart gedit and you are good to go!

Adding rules, eg. % for Rails

Adding is pretty much the same process. In Rails views, you often use:

<% content %>

so it would be great if Gemini had a rule for % and that’s really simple. Looking again at this block of 4 lines of code, what we have is 2 lines that state ASCII values, and 2 lines that show the character.

By modifying and adding % and it’s ascii value 37, we end up with:

  start_keyvals = [34,   96,   40,   91,   123,  60, 37]
  end_keyvals   = [34,   96,   41,   93,   125,  62, 37]
  twin_start    = ['"',  '`',  '(',  '[',  '{',  '<', '%']
  twin_end      = ['"',  '`',  ')',  ']',  '}',  '>', '%']

Restart gedit, and typing “<%” in a view now kicks off the <> and %% rules - awesome.

In a nutshell, if you’re thinking about playing with Parallels, go ahead, but don’t delete your VirtualBox partition to make space for it or you’ll be disappointed.

Introduction to VM Needs

My Mac buddies love Parallels. It allows them to use a browser they hate ( IE7 ) to spend time they don’t have making their sites work for idiots who still use Microsoft products. So when I saw the announement that it was in the Ubuntu repos I hit it straight away.

I have XP and Vista vms under VirtualBox, and, like my Mac buddies do occassionally use them for IE7 testing, but also use IE7 to access QuickBooks Online. Yes, IE6 under Wine can do it, but with heavyness of the QB interface that feels like pulling teeth.

Comparing Parallels and VirtualBox

There really isn’t a comparison. With the same Vista Install, VirtualBox runs smoothely, boots quickly and acts elegantly. With an allocated 512mb, VirtualBox skips along and Parallels flounders. Parallels 5 minute boot includes a 2 minute limbo of “has it crashed or not”, pummelling the entire system so hard that other applications crawl to a halt too. top reveals a pretty constant 30-80% CPU usage by Parallels even when it’s not doing anything.

Parallel Issues with Compiz

Did Canonical Test this thing? With Compiz now standard out of the box with Ubuntu, incredibly, you can’t use Parallels efficiently with Compiz switched on. With Compiz as your display manager, black in a Parallels application becomes transparent! Even setting your linux desktop background to black doesn’t stop it from making a mess of the guest OS’s own overlapping windows. Yuck.

Comparison of Mouse integration

Both vBox and Parallels do a decent job of providing plugins to make mouse movement seamless between parent and child OS.

Other comparisons

Why bother? Horrificly slow boot time during which your machine locks up, high CPU usage, and unusable display - what else is there to talk about?

Until these issues are fixed, then this is a no-go.

The Goal: Build a cheap Ubuntu Linux box for movie and photo viewing on my widescreen TV

I recently experimented with connecting my Xubuntu Linux laptop to my TV and found the results to be interesting enough to seriously rethink my entire media strategy.

It inspired me to embark on a project with a simple goal. To get a PC dedicated to the task. I’m not going to install “Ubuntu Media Server” which is a distribution in it’s own right.. There is no need - it’s just Ubuntu Linux with some extra stuff - so I’m going to install Ubuntu.

My criteria were:

• Spend less than $350
• Leave the door open to upgrade to gigabit ( fast ) network and high end video card
• Find a PC that fit in a space 14.8” high
• Find a PC with low noise levels

Is $350 / entry level too much to ask? NO. Since Microsoft’s launch of Vista, you’ll find that “entry level” for Vista means “loaded!” for Linux!

Build or Buy? What is the best foundation for a Media Center PC

Well that really depends on what special offers you can find, but, it’s more and more common to be able to buy a PC for the same or less than the sum of it’s parts.

I considered one of the cheapo Ubuntu PCs, like the Walmart $199, but reseach that and you’ll find it’s not very expandable - it’s micro sized components in a big box, and more suited to installing in my car than my TV room.. another project brews.

I tracked prices and offers at Tigerdirect.com ( build your own ), HP, Dell and retailers like Circuit City, Best Buy, MicroCenter and CompUSA and decided that I really could buy something within the price range ready made, with the advantage of user reviews to help me gauge fan noise potential.

In the end, the offers at Dell outshone the competion, and their 14.5” high cases closed the deal for me.

How to get the best deal at Dell.com

In a word, “experiment”. There are at least 3 different paths you can take to get the same hardware at Dell.com, with a price variance of up to $60!

On the Inspiron 531 line, you get to choose between standard and “Slim” for the same price. Either could do, but know that the “Slim” version has more limited video driver possibilities - it only accepts half height cards.

The three routes are:

• Build your own ( which takes you down a Vista path )
• Search site for “Ubuntu” which takes you to the Ubuntu Linux Dell PCs
• “Built For you” which offers you a small selection of prebuilt Vista Machines

Try them all! You’ll find price variation like:

• Monitor can be removed from package to save up to $170
• The optical disk on some is a decent Rewrite DVD, and some is more basic with a $30 upgrade option
• Some come with Linux as the OS, but the base hardware is often more expensive!

Another option is to google “Dell Coupons” and see what you come up with. When I ordered, the way to go was the “Built For You” non-customizable machines with the default options, but removed monitor.

• $329
• Free Shipping
• Decent AMD processor ( my preference )
• 1 gig RAM
• 250gig disk
• Onboard nVidia ( for Ubuntu, if in doubt get nVidia )
• Decent Rewriteable DVD that other routes charge an extra $30 for
• A Vista license ( for what it’s worth )

That’s pretty meaty. Just before Vista release I bought my current desktop, a very similar HP for $600 and it has a slightly slower processor!

Tips on Ordering from Dell and getting your gear QUICKLY

Dell go out of their way to avoid giving you shipping estimates during the order process. Their FAQ talks about build times of 3-6 days, but doesn’t make any promises.

Before ordering call DELL customer service and ask what the lead time on builds at the moment. If you have a local DELL store call them too. The answers I got were “about 10 days” and “about 6 days”.

After ordering, the shipping estimate I got from DELL was 30 days!

DELL pride themselves on customer service, and a follow up email detailing that I got verbal estimates of 6 to 10 days got things in motion. I persisted, and the result was an overnight Saturday delivery, 8 days after my order.

I think if you keep going in a DELL email customer support thread, they will continue to make the effort to give you what you consider to be good service. If you don’t ask, you won’t get.

Next steps. Coming very soon