Misc Ubuntu Troubles

[Owen Townend]

On 14/05/2008, Tim Neill <kinghfb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> I've recently inherited [for work] a very nice Vostro notebook, which was
> wiped clean and set up with Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy w/ Reiserfs.
> This machine is primarily a development laptop, using a secondary widescreen
> monitor and networked to about 10 Apple G5 Macs running Leopard and phoning
> home to a very nice Leopard Server. Joining the party is a brand new iPod
> Touch
>
> Several questions are:
> 1) What is the best replacement for Mac's 'TextMate'? I've got some nice
> plugins and highlighting with Geany, but I find that TextMate is still
> superior. I'm genuinely curious to find the best Linux alternative

The default editor in Ubuntu is 'gedit' and it is surprisingly powerful.
There are turorials around that show how to get it to work in a
similar manner to textmate. Googling `gedit textmate` (no quotes) is
sufficient to turn up several.

>  2) As far as SVN is concerned, what is the recommended app to manage and
> sync our code repositories? (GUI is preferable, but in the worst case
> scenario, I will resort to command line). I'm currently struggling to make
> good use of RapidSVN, which has been recommended, but I find it a little
> awkward compared to some SVN software for the Mac

RapidSVN and commandline are the two methods I typically employ,
though depending on your needs you may be interested in wrapping this
with an editor and trying Eclipse.

>  3) The iPod refuses to mount, despite following just about every tutorial
> and suggestion I can find. The main problem appears upon launching the
> 'ipod-touch-mount' script, which reports an 'IP not found' error. A Mac box
> will detect the cable fine, but the Linux box won't mount it. fstab perhaps?

Sorry, no experience here, only an antiquated 4GB mini (hdd, not
flash) which works fine with RhythmBox.

>  4) Running compiz on the machine will occasionally crash the system when
> the OS tries to fade to black to enable the su login box. I think this is an
> nvidia/dual monitor bug, as I can avoid it entirely by disabling effects. If
> anyone knows the exact bug due to a similar problem, I would love to know so
> I can get compiz up and running successfully.

No ideas on the specific bug, but it is possible to disable individual
effects rather than simply switching off all of them. You may at least
be able to narrow the bug to a specific plugin. Try
System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings

>  5) WINE will not uninstall apps, and refuses to run some others. Are there
> any problems with WINE across dual monitors, or running across twin
> dual-core processors? I have both. I have seen some documentation for
> 'uninstalling' apps [ie hard deleting] but this workaround really doesn't
> solve anything.
>

  My limited use of wine 'just works', for the few exceptions there
have been ample trail blazers ahead of me to blog about it.
  Winehq is a good source of info as to what is expected to work and
with what version of wine. Unfortunately what may be a bugfix for one
app may break another and there have been examples where an older
version and/or patches is/are needed for some applications.
  One suggestion that I've seen passed around: depending on your needs
you may want to have a separate wine 'install' for each task or even
application. Look into wineprefixcreate(1) if you're interested. This
allows for using a different (known working) version of wine per
task/application, individual settings (per application is available
using winecfg, but this would allow arbitrary grouping) and the
ability to simply delete the directory when you're done (which would
include all registry entries etc).

> These may sound a little convoluted and disjointed, but these are the -only-
> problems I have encountered when using this OS in a production environment
> for the first time. I have done some research into all of these, and found
> some solutions, but I also need the help and opinion of true experts and
> enthusiasts.
>
> Cheers
> Tim Neill
>

Sounds like it's going well so far.
Good luck with it.

Cheers,
Owen.

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