Linux MintPPC on an Apple iBook M7698LL/A

With May being the 11th birthday of my ancient Apple iBook from 2001, I wondered if it was possible to get it running a lot faster with something other than the originally installed OSX Tiger 10.4.11 operating system.

I'd never tried the various Ubuntu PPC distributions which came out over the years as I'd heard bad things about them. People were always reporting that the battery didn't charge or suspend malfunctioned. As for using the AirPort card to connect to the internet, you might as well forget that you even have one.

But then I found out about MintPPC 9 and, for a number of reasons (including the fact that I can't leave well enough alone), I downloaded and installed it on my iBook.

The installation took just over an hour and I was quite surprised that I didn't even need to add the Xorg.conf update which the MintPPC website recommends. I did it anyway just to be on the safe side although everything looked and sounded right straight away.

Unfortunately, that's where my joy ended.

MintPPC, even though it uses the LXDE desktop environment, was painfully slow to the point of being unusable. I only have 320mb of RAM in my iBook but I doubt that another 256mb would make any difference. I have the original 500mhz PowerPC G3 "Icebook" with 64mb of 66mhz RAM soldered to the board (not the later 128mb version) so it's never going to reach the dizzy heights of 640mb with only one extra memory slot available anyway.

Since owning my iBook (which I got from eBay for $40), I've upgraded the hard drive to 40gb instead of the original 10gb one, changed the CD drive to a DVD drive, and replaced the cable to the LCD (which, infamously, was one of the causes for a lot of product returns and a class action lawsuit for Apple due to the design flaw which pinched the wires in the hinge and made the display fail to light up). I've had this iBook apart several times and it was the worst computer for upgrading that I've ever had the misfortune to work on. But that's another story.

All the things which I took for granted with Tiger were impossible to get working with MintPPC. I had no wireless connection, no DVD playback, and, although I got used to VLC player crashing when playing flv videos on Tiger, it was set as the default for mp3 playback on MintPPC which was absolutely stupid because it crashed with those too.

AbiWord opened slower than MS Word and the same with Gnumeric compared to Excel. Even if it had been available, I don't think I would have had the patience to wait for LibreOffice.

I then started to get random freezes and couldn't even log out or shutdown properly. After several reboots things settled down more but this was a couple of hours in and I'd had enough. I also really hated the cheap and nasty look of LXDE.

So, without further ado, I reinstalled Tiger. It took about an hour to install and probably four more to do all the software and security updates. Putting all the software back on and adding my iTunes library took the rest of the day.

After all this, some good came of it. Tiger now runs a lot faster than it did before. I've deleted a lot of junk (especially music which I was bored with), and I probably won't ever bother putting VLC player or MacTubes back on because neither worked properly anyway.

My Apple iBook is now almost 100% functional. I can play DVDs easily, listen to music with iTunes 8.2.1, and surf the internet with Safari 4 or Camino 2.1. I discovered that using the "mobile" versions of the Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube websites made things even faster (although it's still impossible to play any YouTube videos which are converted to 3gp with my version of QuickTime).

If you are thinking of "upgrading" your iBook to MintPPC, don't! MintPPC is a nice idea and skillfully put together to get as far as it has, but unless you have a top of the range G4 iBook, it'll probably be useless to you.

Ubuntu 12.04 on an Acer Aspire AM1100-B1410A

I did something else this weekend which I swore I'd never do. No, I didn't watch "Puss in Boots" because I've already done that and thoroughly enjoyed it. I downloaded and installed the latest version of Ubuntu.

Called "Precise Pangolin" for those who care about the stupid animal codenames (I have no idea what a pangolin is, by the way), Ubuntu 12.04 is the latest LTS (Long Term Support) version of Canonical's Linux operating system. This means that it will continue to get upgrades and security patches for the next three years (which is more than the life expectancy of my already four year old desktop computer).

Of course, all did not go completely smoothly for me. The installation itself only took half an hour and was fine, but it was all the tweaking that I had to do afterwards which was annoying.

As you can see from the picture above, I'm using Unity 2D because, although I can use the normal version of Unity, the "3D" version was too bloated, used too many resources and, most importantly for me, caused DVD playback to skip frames. I used my "American Psycho" DVD to test the playback using VLC player. It was too jerky to watch on Unity but perfect again on Unity 2D so I've stuck with that for now.

I also had to use Unity 2D to install my email account on Thunderbird. For some reason, it just would not automatically configure the settings for Gmail under the normal Unity but it worked fine in 2D. I think Unity is still pretty buggy so I've also installed the various Gnome desktops and Xubuntu/Xfce although I probably won't use them unless I start having major problems and can't log in.

Gnome 3 is horrible to use but there's a "fallback" version which looks and works a lot like Gnome 2. I'm glad that the developers had the sense to include it as this was one of the things which drove me to Linux Mint 11. The recycle bin on the bottom panel was bizarrely missing but I've used a program called MyUnity to put it back on the Unity desktop.

I couldn't switch the positions of the icons on the "Dash" dock thing on the left either without doing it under normal Unity and then returning to Unity 2D (but it won't leave them resized). Canonical really need to fix this with Unity 2D.

Other bugs I found were that the Thunar file manager took ages to start on Xubuntu (which was something to do with gfvs not mounting properly, and there was a cosmetic "Could not write bytes: Broken pipe" message when logging out which is some bug in the Plymouth system). I solved the former by Googling for a solution and the latter by running a disk check on startup (which opened the GRUB bootloader at one point before restarting). Both problems have now disappeared.

Rhythmbox has replaced Banshee as the music player. It crashed on me when I first imported my music library but appears to be working properly now. Again, I think it was a Unity problem and I probably should have used Unity 2D when I first set it up. I prefer to use Audacious to play back music anyway.

One thing which is still annoying me after trying out the Guest Session is that occasionally I will get asked to re-enter my keychain password if I log out or shut down as soon as I've logged in. This must be something to do with the speed at which the keychain information is loaded. It didn't do it before I tried out the Guest Session (which froze the computer the first time and caused me to have to shut down incorrectly by holding in the power button) but I'll just have to live with it until someone else posts a solution. The Guest Session works now but it's unnecessary on my or any other home user's computer anyway.

Anyway, I suppose this is sort of a review of Ubuntu 12.04 so I'll just wrap it up by saying that Unity isn't as bad as a lot of people would have you believe. With 12.04, Canonical have really polished the turd and actually made it usable.

Aesthetically, Unity really only replaces the "Quick Launch" icons and the "Open Windows" applet from the bottom panel of Gnome 2. There's a lot more behind the scenes, of course, including an Apple-like way of finding files and applications which is still slower to me than the previous three-part menu but it's all very smooth, it's free, and it works.

For most people, Ubuntu 12.04 will be the best version of Linux until Mint 13 gets an official release.

Amp Energy has changed the design on their cans!

As a long term Monster energy drinker, there are, unfortunately, times when I've exhausted the supply in my local inconvenience store and had to resort to the "poor man's Monster" known as Amp Energy.

It's not a bad drink but sort of gutless like most Pepsi products and it doesn't give me any energy or real satisfaction other than having a different green can to drink out of.

Since it was 73 degrees outside, I went out and got myself a couple of slices of pizza (2 for $3) and, surprise, surprise, there was no Monster in the fridge so I had to buy an Amp. But it wasn't the normal black can with green writing on it, it was this (pictured left).

At first I wasn't sure if it was a real Amp or one of those pathetic sugar (and taste) free versions which I still don't understand the point of. On closer inspection, I realised that they'd changed the design on the can to something more contemporary. When I saw the price was "2 for $3" (just like the pizza), I thought "What the Hell", and bought a couple anyway. Let's face it, it's never going to be even as good as Gridlock from Aldi but, if you are thirsty and Amp is on offer, it'll do.

So, I had two slices of pizza (pepperoni and buffalo chicken, in case you wondered) and two Amps. I sat outside, the sun was shining (and Summer seems to be on its way), and I almost enjoyed the experience.

"But what has this got to do with horror?" I hear you ask. Absolutely nothing at all except that I needed a break after filling up my external hard drive with over 600 DVD rips of my favourite horror DVDs. It has taken me years to copy them over using an assortment of programs including "1Click DVD copy" and "DVD Cloner" just for the sake of being able to plug my drive into any of my computers and watch horror movies anywhere without having to drag a load of DVDs around with me.

I'm going to be upgrading my operating system on my desktop computer later this year to openSUSE as I'm a little bit bored with Linux Mint now. Linux Mint all works as well as it should (although I preferred Ubuntu 9.10) so I have no good reason for changing but I can't stand the "Unity vs. Gnome 3 vs. Cinnamon vs. MATE" kerfuffle so I'm switching to KDE. Having all my movies on an external hard drive will mean that I will have a lot of working space again even though I'm bound to drag a lot of them back on, but I will cover all this, of course, in another post.

As you can see in the video below, openSUSE 12.1 matches the Amp can almost perfectly.

Ubuntu 6.06 on a Sony Vaio FX-101

I got bored so I dug out my old Sony Vaio laptop which I bought back in 2002, gave it a "new" 15gb hard drive, put 128mb RAM into it (after previously stealing the 256mb RAM chip for my Apple iBook), and reloaded it with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

Why Ubuntu 6.06? Well, it's the only one which works properly on the Sony Vaio FX-101 even though it's obsolete now. The version I used this time was Ubuntu 6.06.2 which took about an hour to install. Then I simply changed all the repositories to "old-releases" and left it to download all the updates for another hour or so.

All the usual programs are now on there albeit older versions such as GIMP 2.4 (rather than 2.6), OpenOffice 2.0 and Firefox 1.5. There used to be a way to get Firefox 2 on there using Ubuntuzilla but that script doesn't work anymore and I prefer to use Epiphany as my browser on this laptop anyway. Flash 9 is the only other problem as there's no way to get Flash 10 installed to watch YouTube videos anymore.

The games all work properly (including the sound!) and, since most of them run better than on my main computer, that's decided the main use that this old Vaio will have. Pulse audio has a lot to answer for.

I upgraded the CD drive to DVD a couple of years ago and it plays my horror movies really well under Ubuntu 6.06. At one point I had Ubuntu 10.10 on this laptop and it was very sluggish for DVD playback. I don't know what exactly was changed during the various versions but it wasn't too good in any case.

Medibuntu no longer supported the DVD codecs so I installed them semi-manually with an easily to find .deb file. All the other codecs were in the archived repositories which was useful.

One thing I've discovered about Linux on old computers is that none of the modern distros will work properly so it's always best to go back to the earliest one which supports your hardware and fiddle with it. Xubuntu and all those other XFCE based Linux versions are absolutely useless and aren't much lighter than their Gnome equivalents. Of course, Linux Puppy will work but it's a horrible thing to use and I've never understood the appeal of it.

Anyway, Ubuntu 6.06 works perfectly on a Sony Vaio FX-101. If you've still got one, I highly recommend installing using the "alt" version of Ubuntu 6.06 and resurrecting it.

Linux Mint 11 on an Acer Aspire AM1100-B1410A

Well, I finally did it. I replaced Ubuntu 9.10 on my desktop with Linux Mint 11 (Katya). The only reason I did it was because I wanted LibreOffice and Firefox 5 but it was definitely time to clear out a lot of junk which I never use anyway.

My Acer desktop is almost three years old now and it's been very good with Ubuntu 9.10. If Canonical hadn't discontinued support for "Karmic Koala" back in April, I would have been very happy with it forever though I did have to use "Minefield" instead of the real Firefox 4 at the end of its life.

Anyway, I would have gone for the latest Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwal) release but, having had no real luck with it on my laptop, I decided to put Mint 11 on it instead. Linux Mint 11 is basically the same Ubuntu operating system anyway but with a few bug fixes, all the codecs already added, a slightly different Software Manager and a Windows-style menu.

As you can see from the screencap, I started fiddling with the themes and got it looking a lot like a standard version of Ubuntu's Gnome desktop again. I really don't like the special Mint menu or the green themes so you probably wonder why I choose Linux Mint over Ubuntu at all and, now that I've installed everything, I do too. I suppose that I could have just changed the Ubuntu 11.04 settings but I honestly didn't have the patience. Linux Mint 11 already came with 90% of all the programs that I use regularly without any further downloads so it saved a lot of time. I think it took less than two hours to put everything back to how it was.

I added Xsane instead of Simple Scan (which is too slow for me) and a few other programs which you can see. I'm more of a "double-click on the desktop" person than a "quick launch" user so I always end up with a ton of icons on the desktop. It may not be the best way to do things but it makes me happy and I'm comfortable with it.

As with every Linux installation, I did have to tweak a few things to get it how I wanted. Not only did I download a ton of themes to play with (and swapped the window buttons back to the right side when I needed to) but I changed Compiz to Metacity since the latest release of the former is really buggy.

Linux Mint has sort of got rid of the Plymouth splash screen by making it completely black which is a weird thing to do but seems to make everything load slightly quicker from a cold boot. I'm not sure what else has been changed apart from removing Evolution for no good reason and Tomboy Notes is no longer the same. It can't be added to the panel in the same way which is quite annoying though it's been that way since Ubuntu 10.10.

For now, I'm almost content with Linux Mint but I'll probably wipe it when the next Ubuntu comes out in October. I still think that Ubuntu 9.04 was the best version of Linux so far and I often wish that the developers wouldn't keep changing things every six months but, other than moving to Debian completely, I have no choice if I want to stay on the bleeding edge. I never use the upgrades and always go for a complete reinstall which is no trouble at all really apart from putting a few passwords back in.

Linux Mint 11 has a few quirks including the Software Manager not refreshing to show that programs really have been installed but I've got used to it and it's only a couple of extra clicks to make sure. So far I think it's a good version of Linux but I don't feel quite as safe with it as Ubuntu 9.10 and it just doesn't look right yet. I felt the same way since Ubuntu 8.04 so I'm probably just being paranoid.

My Top Ten Freeware Applications

Having just downloaded the beta version of Firefox 5 onto the Windows XP part of my laptop, I was disappointed to discover that Linux Mint doesn't have a version available for it yet. Since I've decided to try and make a bit more use of Windows XP while I'm waiting for somebody to fix the ACPI problems that I'm having with the new Linux kernel, even though this Microsoft operating system is nearly 10 years old now, I found that I could still keep it fairly up to date with free software.

Apart from my Lady Gaga wallpaper, here's what I've downloaded recently to try and keep the environment as close as I can to my preferred Linux.

1. VLC Media Player 1.1.9
Apart from Firefox, this is one of the first things which I download whenever I install a new operating system. For someone who watches a lot of movies like me, you can't beat VLC Media Player on any platform.

2. AbiWord 2.8.6
Whereas some people need all the bells and whistles of OpenOffice or LibreOffice, I don't actually use a word processor all that often but, when I do, I like to have it pop-up as quickly as possible. AbiWord does more than I need it to do and it's very useful for creating the occasional blog.

3. Gnumeric 1.10.14
When I need to open a spreadsheet, I add Gnumeric as well although I really have no great use for it otherwise. I once tried to make a database of my Mill Creek DVD collection but so far have never completed it. I was amazed to find that there was a Windows version of Gnumeric as I've always believed that it was a Linux only application.

4. Firefox 5
If I'm ever forced to use a barebones version of Windows, I use Internet Explorer for just long enough to download Firefox. From then on Firefox is my default web browser. Most versions of Linux have Firefox installed already or this would be number one on my list. I've also tried Google Chrome/Chromium but it's just not as good yet.

5. WinRar 4.01
I never have any use for this on Linux but as a user of WinZip for many years, I discovered that this was a much better alternative on Windows XP and I tend to need it almost instantly.

6. Adobe Reader 10.0.1
Again this is not something which I'd fall over myself to use on Linux or a Mac because it's become so bloated but I still have to have it on Windows XP to view a lot of pdf attachments and ebooks. I can't believe it's got to version 10 as there's really no reason to download anything other than version 5.

7. Skype 5.3.0.116
I've never really got into using Skype for the telephone side of things but it's a useful instant messenger at times. I could easily live without it but I find myself installing it on everything just in case I ever need it.

8. Pidgin 2.7.11
Since I use all the instant messengers, it's nice to be able to access them all in one program. Although ICQ doesn't seem to work through Pidgin anymore, this is a much better alternative to bloated offerings such as Trillian (which I used to love more than anything up until a couple of years ago).

9. The Gimp 2.6.11
I've never been able to work out how to use Adobe Photoshop as I was an avid user of Paint Shop Pro until it became completely useless to me on the newer versions of Windows. Because I got used to the GIMP's inclusion on Ubuntu, it's something that I still have to download. It does everything I need a graphic program to do and, of course, it's completely free. Seashore (a lighter version of GIMP) is the only decent alternative when I'm using a Mac.

10. CCleaner 3.07.1457
I use this a couple of times after installing everything on Windows XP and then never run it again. It's a great program for tidying up the start menu entries and cleaning the registry but of little value to me otherwise.

I also tend to download a few programs which I don't think I've ever used but I install them anyway including FileZilla, Audacity, ThunderBird and ImgBurn. I don't use FTP for anything, no longer need to edit a podcast, only use web-based email, and have nothing to burn to CD or DVD. Of course, there's always the possibility that I might need these programs one day.

For anti-virus software, I use Avira or Avast depending on whichever version is getting the best reviews at the time though I used to be very happy with AVG and ZoneAlarm before they slowed my computers down to an unusable crawl.

What are your favourite free programs?

Linux Mint on an Acer TravelMate 630

If you ever wondered what I use to hammer my horror movie reviews into while I sit in front of the telly, the answer is an old Acer TravelMate 630 which I usually refer to as my "craptop".

It's not my only laptop computer. I also have three Panasonic Toughbook CF-27s (two 300mhz and one 500mhz currently running Windows 2000 which I use for work), a Sony Vaio FX-101 (with Ubuntu 10.10 on it just for use as a DVD player), an old Apple iBook (500mhz with Tiger and upgraded to DVD) and an Asus EeePC (with EasyPeasy - a netbook version of Ubuntu - on it) which is too small to be useful for anything but watching YouTube.

Apart from the Sony Vaio which I bought from Comet back in 2001, all these old laptops have come dirt cheap from ebay without RAM, hard drives or power supplies which I've added later. I usually max these things out and run through just about every Windows operating system known to man before trying to force Linux on them and, until only last week, the Acer TravelMate was creaking its way through Windows XP SP3.

You would think that a Pentium 4 laptop with a 1.8ghz processor, 512mb RAM and a 40gb hard drive would be more than adequate for my portable computing needs and you'd be right. The trouble is that I can't abide Windows and, now that I have a Roku box to watch Netflix, I don't need XP for anything. I stopped playing games on computers around 2004 when I got an X-Box.

So, to cut a long story short, I have spent the best part of a week installing just about every version of Linux onto my Acer TravelMate only for it to keep freezing. I tried Ubuntu (from 8.10 through to 11.04) only to have either the annoying Orinoco internal wireless card not be able to connect to WPA or have crappy graphics due to no drivers for the 32mb Nvidia Geforce2go. I also went through all versions of Puppy, Xubuntu, OpenSuse, and Fedora before finally getting somewhere with Xubuntu 11.04 until it crashed irrecoverably.

What I found with Xubuntu was that without the new "experimental" Nvidia drivers, DVD and AVI playback was covered with flickering lines all over the screen. With the drivers, it would work for a while then randomly freeze. With Linux Mint 11 only a couple of days old, I knew it would have the same drivers but I thought it would be more stable so I tried it.

What I can tell you is that Linux Mint 11 will work on an Acer TravelMate 630 but it's still not quite right. The problem is that to prevent freezing, it has to be run with ACPI off. Obviously that means that the Nvidia drivers don't kick in and you can't shut down automatically but everything else works including the internet. Watching movies on it without the Nvidia drivers is impossible and I found that I couldn't even close VLC player while viewing "Dust Devil" (1992) which was very annoying.

It's nearly there though. I posted a screenshot above to show you how good it looks. I may have to go back to Windows XP yet again but I'm going to wait a while to see if some bright spark can come up for a fix for the "ACPI versus Nvidia" problem which has plagued thousands of laptops (according to my Googling) ever since Linux was invented. That Plymouth boot screen nonsense has to go too. I tried all the fixes and I've still never seen it work on any computer (even my desktop).

Anyway, that's how I've been wasting all my free time. I've been playing with Linux while watching all sorts of crappy "2 stars out of 5" horror films on streaming Netflix which seem to be all that they have to offer.

I just watched "Black Death" (as a physical DVD from Netflix since it won't be streaming until June 6th) and I wasn't overly impressed. I don't think it really counts as a horror film but it was pretty horrible with all that shaky camerawork. Christopher Smith has made a couple of films which I enjoyed, "Severance" (2006) and "Triangle" (2009), but, unfortunately, "Black Death" (2010) was not another one of them. It had a couple of gory bits but it was just too slow and boring. I had to watch it twice due to falling asleep the first time and I hate it when that happens.

As ever, I'm working on quite a few horror movie reviews which I'll post eventually but it's nearly Summer and I've lost a lot of my inertia due to the overwhelming heat and thunderstorms where I live. I'm not sure if there's anything worth looking forward to among this year's Summer movies but I expect to find a lot to hate about the "Fright Night" remake. I'm probably not going to like it and, as biased as that may be, it's how I feel about most of these unnecessary remakes. I very much doubt that anything about "Fright Night" will change my mind although David Tennant replacing Roddy McDowell may work in its favour and I never did like William Ragsdale or his Charley Brewster character in the original anyway.