Well, I guess it had to happen some time…  the system disk on my home Ubuntu server started going south recently.  Just a few errors here and there, but once it starts, it only gets worse.  So I thought I’d write down the steps I took to move my system to a new disk, partly…

I just upgraded my Ubuntu box from 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) to 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), and after 3 upgrades (I started out with Dapper Drake) I remain impressed with how easy and painless it is. This time there was a hiccup, though. But, it’s not something that I’d expect an average user to encounter. First, a…

I just finished upgrading the hard drive on my Ubuntu machine, and it wasn’t as easy or straightforward as I was expecting.  So I figured I’d write up some notes for the next time I do it. First I backed everything up. Then I shut down the computer, put the new drive in, and booted…

I’ve been using Ubuntu now for about 2 1/2 months. The verdict so far: I like it. When I initially installed it, I was looking for a Linux distro with a reasonably well-integrated and user-friendly desktop environment, and Ubuntu (with GNOME) has lived up to those expectations. I really like the GNOME file manager with…

I think I’ve finally got an Ubuntu font setup that I can live with. It’s not perfect, but it’s livable. Here’s what I did so I can replicate it if necessary. Install msttcorefonts package. Install MS “Tahoma” and “Tahoma Bold” fonts, neither of which are included with msttcorefonts. Set X server to 96x96DPI. Install a…

I tracked down a spare 8.5gig disk today (the one that came with my old P2-300 box, ironically) and installed Ubuntu on it. First problem: I installed the spare disk as an IDE slave, and the Ubuntu install totally hosed the boot loader on the master (Grub). After installation, the boot loader gave some cryptic…

Last Friday I tried out the latest release of Ubuntu Linux. They provide a “live” CD, which boots and runs directly from the CD just like Knoppix. My goal is to find a nice desktop-oriented version of Linux that “just works”. On the server side, I’m sticking with Debian, but I find vanilla Debian a…