Big Fat Ostrich

I’m officially finished messing around with operating systems for awhile, and I’m officially done with Arch Linux. I re-installed my office machine with Arch Linux a while back, and it was a great experience. Except for one thing. It sucked.

Seriously, if it wasn’t for the one tiny detail of Arch Linux sucking, it would have been awesome.

To be fair, I didn’t try hard enough. But, I just want an OS that works. Arch Linux is a great OS for performance nerds, like Gentoo fans who enjoy compiling every module for days. In my own experience, this is a fun way to really get to know Linux. However, those days are behind me and I just want an OS that works.

Arch Linux is so light and fast, but it’s also a desolate place where nothing lives but the core OS. You have to install every package manually and when I found that even the fucking calculator had to be installed (as part of gnome-extra) well, that was the last straw.

So I made an executive decision and did something I haven’t done in years.

I installed Fedora. Fedora 16.

Why? Two reasons. For one, most of our software runs on Redhat and Fedora is in the same family. Second, I use dual monitors and Ubuntu has become a complete idiot when it comes to managing that.

Well so far so good because Fedora 16 (Verne) works right out of the box. Yep. Everything works: external monitors (both of them) work which includes flipping them vertically or horizontally without having to mess around with your xorg.conf. No wireless issues, and the clean install is fast and snappy. Overall, Fedora 16 is a huge improvement over whatever Fedora I used in the past (like 2008). Even YUM feels better and package management seems tighter.

So for now I’m just going to use it as a regular desktop and see if any issues come up. I really have nothing else to say about it right now because I’m still blown away by the fact that the whole installation was complete and working in under 20 minutes. Also, xfce is light and clean. Had to install the ms-fonts after the fact, but no big deal.

Here’s the default desktop. Looking kinda Steampunk:

Continuing with the joy that is Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and how it completely messed up my previously working wireless, here’s a solution. Note that I’m currently using a Dell Core i3 Inspiron using the following Broadcom network adapter:

Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4353]

You can run lspci -nvn | grep -i net from a shell console if you want to find out which card your machine uses.

Anyway, long story short, you may need to remove the wrong drivers and install the correct ones. This solution worked but may not work for everyone depending on your hardware:

Remove and uninstall the drivers:

sudo apt-get purge broadcom-sta-common broadcom-sta-source bcmwl-kernel-source

Install the correct one:

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer

Enjoy and let us know if this solution worked for you. Found a different solution? Tell us about it!

Well it took a day, but I fixed the monitor problems on Ubuntu 11.04!

After experiencing THE most unstable Ubuntu upgrade yet, my external display resolution was basically a sea of Technicolor vomit. The display on my Dell 1564 i3 was fine, but attaching an external VGA monitor resulted in an unusable display of flickering madness. I also figured out why they called the distro Natty Narwhal: because it acts like a beached whale with a spike in its brain! Fucking Natty.

Anyway, this is how I fixed the garbled external display problem:

1) The Easy Way

a – Open System > Administration > System Testing
b – After entering your admin password, click next. You’ll have a list of many items to test.
c – Chose Monitor Tests and Video Tests

Run the tests with your external monitor detached.

When the tests are complete, run them again with the external monitor attached. You may have to position your mouse on the ‘Test” button before you attach the monitor, since the display resolution will still be garbled once the monitor is attached. When you’re ready, click “Test”. When the tests complete, you should have your external display back. If all looks good, you’ll just have to configure your display settings. And that’s it!

2) The Hard Way
a – Open a terminal and type xrandr
b – You’ll see something similar to this:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 640×480+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
1366×768       59.6 +
1360×768       59.8     60.0
1024×768       60.0
800×600        60.3     56.2
640×480        59.9*
VGA1 connected 1680×1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 434mm x 270mm
1680×1050      59.9*+   60.0
1280×1024      75.0     60.0
1440×900       75.0     59.9
1280×960       60.0
1152×864       75.0
1024×768       75.1     60.0
832×624        74.6
800×600        75.0     60.3     56.2
640×480        75.0     60.0
720×400        70.1
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Choose which display you want to be your primary and form your command like so: xrandr –output VGA1 –primary

Honestly, this isn’t the best method if you want to fix it visually. Running the Monitor Tests from the System Testing menu uses xrandr anyway and should get your second external monitor up and running. Hopefully things will run better in 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot which will be out in October 2011.

Next up: How to Uninstal Unity