I might not have found the perfect desktop experience yet, but I’m damn close to getting there.

With a resource-wary blend of Compiz, Emerald, and GNOME, I’ve crafted an elegant and light desktop that looks and feels good to work in.

I’ve uploaded some screens of my new desktop in action, and I am in the middle of working out a guide to an amazing desktop experience. It should be coming soon…

Basic window management

Expo shows off my 4 desktops in a cool curve.

 

After installing Ubuntu Karmic (which came out today) on my netbook and playing around with it for a few hours, I have compiled a good set of points to share as a “first impressions” post.

First off, Karmic is bleeding-edge. I don’t expect it to be as stable without updates, and it shows. I have had the kernel (yes, the kernel) crash on me twice, once while adjusting the display resolution and once… well, randomly. Some of the processes are also pretty glitchy, like Nautilus, which doesn’t close when its supposed to (and believe me,  I know that it is). The boot-up timing is a few seconds off as well. The “login ready” sound plays a few seconds before the login screen actually appears, and the successful login sound also plays while the thing is still stuck at the loading screen. Oh, and the Intel graphics fix? Doesn’t work. In fact, dragging or resizing windows was choppy for some reason. And wasn’t Karmic supposed to include GRUB 2? All I see is the beta release of GRUB 1.97. GAZB!

Complaints aside, Karmic is jam-packed full of new features and actually looks… good! Karmic increased the contrast between its oranges and browns, favoring a dark, saturated brown with a bright orange. It’s the kind of look you can only describe with those high-class, French words like chique or suède. I still prefer to go dark gray and green to match my dark hardware and green room, but Karmic’s color scheme is one of the only ones I actually like. Various other visual enhancements popped up all over the place as well, including the revamped Network Applet (is that what it’s called?) and the simplistic design of Empathy over Pidgin.

Under the hood, Karmic began deprecating HAL in favor of the (hopefully) superior DeviceKit. Also added is the Upstart app, which manages the bootup process and starting services, replacing what I think was the initrd daemon. Perhaps this early integration of Upstart is what caused the bootup problems I mentioned earlier. Either way, Karmic performed well, much faster than Jaunty. Resource usage, especially RAM, was a bit on the high side compared to the 9.04 release, but as long I have enough of my RAM to run Firefox, Openoffice AND Netbeans at once (my favorite RAM benchmark), I won’t complain. I didn’t actually do the benchmark though (for lack of an internet connection), but with my configured desktop running at about 250MB of RAM (that doesn’t sound like much, but I only have 1GB of it, and a netbook), I don’t think there will be any problems. The biggest problem will probably either be CPU or GPU performance.

On the usability side, Karmic adds a hyped-up App Center, which will, as rumors state, eventually replace Synaptic. Scared? I use Synaptic + Terminal exclusively when I install/remove apps, so I am a bit frightened. I hope that by “replace” they really mean “merge”. It would be just too much to lose a good package manager, especially in a solid distribution like Ubuntu. The App Center itself, though, is a great spin on managing applications, but I find that it takes too many clicks to get the job done.

And that’s pretty much it. I expect that Karmic will evolve into a perfectly stable OS given a few weeks of updates and criticism, but until then, there is no reason you shouldn’t upgrade.

Tip: Upgrade by installing fresh – you’ll get enhancements like the latest GRUB and the ext4 filesystem.

Today, October 29th, 2009, the new Ubuntu release comes out. It’s called Karmic Koala, and I’m downloading it as we speak. In fact, it’s so popular that the Ubuntu website was down for a few moments, but after a short restroom break everything was good as new. I’m even lucky enough to get my own 400kB/s download speed, considering the insane demand for the OS.

I’ll write more after I mess around with it, but Karmic Koala is the last missing link in my netbook after the tragic crash a few days back. I’ve been waiting for Karmic before I reinstalled my Linux system, so rest assured I’ll try to make this one fit as flush with my PC as possible (and it should fit quite well – all the drivers (wired, wireless, graphics) are there, and the applications aren’t too hard to obtain. More later.

I’ve just had an epiphany.

No not the GNOME web browse Epiphany (I prefer Chrome if Webkit is the way to go), but a WordPress epiphany. So as of now, I’ll stop my GNOME vs KDE flamewar and instead start a page, instead of a series of posts. That way, I can easily add and edit as I go, and I’m not limited to 10 posts.

I’ll actually have it done soon.

For those three people in the world actually following this blog, you might have noticed a slowdown in my GNOME to KDE series of posts. Here is why.

After trying out a new Linux distro (CrunchBang Linux), I decided to install. The funny story is that I stupidly decided to replace my bootloader during the installation (I was trying a new partitioning scheme). And then, wouldn’t you know it, the installation crashed at 49%. So not only is #! (that’s the shortform for CrunchBang; it’s a geek joke) was not installed, it completely erased my bootloader and rendered my PC completely useless, not even booting normally. Instead, it booted to GRUB rescue mode, with half of the command malfunctioning. Running Linux live didn’t work either for some reason, and while tweaking the BIOS settings to find the source of the problem, the setup froze on me again, and while saving at that. So now I had a non-booting computer and a corrupt BIOS. Damn.

Thankfully, the BIOS problem solved itself after a few reboots, resetting to its factory settings (although it gave me quite a scare when the POST screen wasn’t showing up; a prompt disabling of the Boot Booster option fixed this). But I still had a malfunctioning laptop, and my other PC didn’t even have internet configured.

I must have downloaded gigabytes of live Linux distributions to find one that actually worked. So far, all of them didn’t boot and fell back to the GRUB rescue prompt. This was strange, since GRUB has nothing to do with booting live, since that task is given to the BIOS. Fearing the previous BIOS accident permanently corrupted it, I quickly headed to download my last distribution – Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

The reason I neglected downloading UNR was because of its huge size (almost a gigabyte). So far, I’ve been downloading ISOs of distros like Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux.

There was one more reason I chose UNR, and that was its format. Since my broken PC is actually a netbook, I had to burn the ISOs to a USB stick for lack of a CD drive. To do this, I used a tool called UNetbootin. This makes the ISO USB-compatible, but also installs its own kernel to mount the image, which is what I suspected to be causing the problem (I had some problems with the UNetbootin way many times before – especially with OpenSUSE 11.1). But since UNR comes in a USB image, I just directly wrote that to the USB, byte by byte (get it?). And it worked!

So, after an installation to replace the bootloader (and to occupy the space in my Linux partition), my PC was (fully functional) again. Now, to configure internet on my fresh Linux distro. I keep my network profiles on a private and secured USB drive, which is right…… not here.

And not in my house either. I looked everywhere. Great. A perfectly good (though once physically broken) 4-gig USB drive gone. And with my network password on it as well. Only one thing to do – change the damn network password. And since I’m not the admin of my home wifi, I didn’t have access to the password. Furthermore, since the password was indeed changed, the internet on my perfectly working Windows system stopped working as well. So, no Linux or internet, just stuck with damn Windows with no e-mail or anything to keep me occupied (though Windows’ constant freezes and slowdowns keep me waiting a fair bit of time anyway).

Two days later (today), however, I found the internet functional again, on both of my machines. Well, except on Linux, but since I plan on doing a clean install when the new release of Ubuntu comes out, I think I’ll just stick with Windows until then.

I found my USB the next day.

In my hunt for the ideal Linux distribution for my netbook (which, so far, stands at Ubuntu Desktop), I’ve come across Moblin, a very specialized netbook operating system, developed by Intel. Moblin, I found, makes a netbook exactly what it is meant to be – a netbook. While it has barely more features than a rudimentary office suite, web browser, mail/calendar, media player, and a handful of social integrations, where Moblin shines is speed, simplicity, and the fact that it was built for netbooks and netbooks only. The Moblin philosophy is that you won’t play Halo or watch HD movies on the damn thing – that’s why we have desktops.

The Moblin Netbook OS

But all of that’s still nice; imagine sitting down at a coffee shop and just opening your ‘book to Moblin’s sleek and streamlined interface in a matter of seconds, not minutes as is the case with Windows (even Linux, with all of the speed enhancements, still sticks at the boot screen by the time they bring you your juice or choice of beer). Even Ubuntu Netbook Remix isn’t this specialized – it still has the power of a full desktop. Moblin, on the other hand, gives you only the features you’ll actually need to use at the coffee shop, meeting room, or the occasional plane. In fact, Moblin almost makes the netbook more of a Mobile Internet Device (MID) instead of a real computer.

No, you’ll never get to do your Java development or finish that final level in that game of yours. Every feature of Moblin is integrated into the OS itself – which gives it the perfect kind of integration between applications and the interface (which, by the way, is sexy, intuitive, and very MID-like) but also means you’ll miss out on all of Firefox’s extras or the endless plugins of the GIMP.

But while I do see the merits of this kind of OS, it’s ultimately a high-budget, wealthy-consumer product. While it doesn’t cost a dime to download, use, and share, it severely limits the capability of a netbook, and assumes that you have a real laptop or desktop on which to play games and watch movies (almost degrading the netbook to yet another expensive geek toy). But since my old laptop is, quite literally, falling apart, I end up using my netbook as my primary machine (for surfing, writing, playing, and, god forbid, programming), and using a cut-down OS like Moblin just doesn’t fit the bill.

But if you already have the budget to consider a netbook as yet another geek toy, Moblin is, without a doubt, one of the best things that will happen to it. And it’s not as if you can’t dual-boot it with a desktop-oriented Linux like Ubuntu, right?

In my hunt for the ideal Linux distribution for my netbook (which, so far, stands at Ubuntu Desktop), I’ve come across Moblin, a very specialized netbook operating system, developed by Intel. Moblin, I found, makes a netbook exactly what it is meant to be – a NETbook. While it has barely more features than a rudimentary office suite, webbrowser, media player, and a handful of social intergrations, where Moblin shines is speed, simplicity, and the fact that it was built for netbooks and netbooks only. The Moblin philosophy is that you won’t play Halo or watch HD movies on the damn thing – that’s why we have desktops.

Though I can’t say I’m surprised by the presence of a netbook upon my return from Slovakia, I am startled by how lighter my wallet is after shelling out 140 euros (that’s about half of the netbook’s price).

In any case, I’ve been playing with it every day now, and I’m more than satisfied with it. Granted, it has its quirks and unpleasantries, but all in all it’s an excellent machine for any occasion.

While it may be a bit large and unwieldy for a netbook, it balances it out with a stellar battery life (about 10.5 advertised hours), and shells out an impressive 6+ hours of runtime with wi-fi enabled. In fact, the battery barely sticks out from the system, though its bulk is camouflaged by the netbook’s thickness.

The keyboard has a welcome ’snap’ to it, but slightly caves inward when typing. Likewise, the plastic casing (as well as the hinges) feels a bit delicate, and flexes when pushed.

The touchpad, which is covered by tiny raised Braille-like dots (a cool edition) lacks a border, which is especially annoying when trying to scroll vertically without looking down. Even so, the Braille dots don’t accentuate the touchpad much, which makes finding the edge even harder in bad lighting conditions. It’s also quite large, extending all the way to the space bar. While this is excellent for a netbook, I’ve accidentally toggled a click by grazing the touchpad while pressing the space bar, misplacing my cursor or even closing my active window sometimes. Because of this, I turned the tap-to-click feature off, using the rocker bar below the touchpad to click instead. The rocker bar itself feels sturdy and springy, but I still prefer two separate buttons.

These are only minor annoyances, however, and I’ve long since learned to overcome or ignore them. Under the hood of the netbook, though, are two Intel Atom N270 (1.66 GHz) processors, a ton of RAM for a netbook (1GB), and a powerful, if integrated, graphics card. Playing some classic games like UT wasn’t a problem, though I try to avoid taxing the system too much, as it can get slightly warm under your left palm. I installed Ubuntu on it (and am using it as my primary OS) with Windows as my back-up and games platform.

Storage isn’t a problem – 160GB is almost twice as much as my old machine – and there is plenty of space to go around even for two operating systems. There is also a back-up method built in to the netbook, since it doesn’t have a CD drive. While this takes up about 4.5GB of space on the hard drive, it’s a welcome addition, since external CD/DVD drives cost a small fortune. Still, Asus supplied a backup disk with the 1005HA.

I’ve yet to run some hardcore benchmarks and performance tests, but I’ll write with an in-depth review, as well as an Ubuntu primer for the EeePC 1005HA. Until then, stay connected, web prowlers!