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November 2008
November 27, 2008
November 24, 2008
Lenovo X200 and Ubuntu 8.10
Last time I was looking for a laptop I chose the hp 2510p. The 2510p is a great laptop and I will continue to use it. Unfortunately the pokey 1.8 inch drive in it was really starting to annoy me, so I decided to look for a new laptop, something that would be able to churn through VMs and the like.
Ok, I lie ... I didn't /need/ a new laptop that bad, but as many of you know, I am a Thinkpad junkie and I just couldn't bear to not have one, so I got a new Lenovo X200. Pics here. I've had it for about a month and thought I would share my opinion of this laptop.
First things first. I decided to skip the fingerprint reader this time around because I found myself never using it in my old laptop. It only comes with Intel video so that was an easy decision, for wireless I opted for the Intel 5300. Unfortunately for me Lenovo instead sent me an Intel 5100 wireless adapter in the X200. I was wary of the 5100 due to it's apparent regression in performance vs. a 4965. I haven't had any issues with the 5100 other than the feeling in the back of my head that I should have gotten a 5300. I could just mail Lenovo but I didn't want to ship my laptop back, and I wonder if they would even just send me the 5300 in the mail so I can install it myself. Either way wireless isn't an issue with this laptop in Ubuntu.
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| From ThinkpadX200 |
Installing Ubuntu
Thanks to evand's awesome usb-creator I was able to make a USB stick installation on my desktop in a few minutes and then installed Ubuntu 8.10 via USB. I am really starting to prefer this method of installation because it's easy, doesn't need a CDR, and best of all, it's quicker.
Initial X configuration was kind of borked - I was seeing bug 273899. After finding information from the thinkwiki and the always excellent Ubuntu Forums I was able to find a xorg.conf that did the trick. Chris Jones also happened to have an X200 handy and added some information to the bug.
Suspend and resume was fixed by adding a acpi_sleep=s3_bios to the kernel boot parameters. I also followed the thinkwiki recommendations for BIOS settings.
The webcam was also not working in Cheese, see bug 290506 and bug 287888.
The fan sometimes goes nuts and thinkwiki recommends this thing called tpfand. I did not try this because Chris Jones recommended not to have a userspace daemon to control the fan. I don't know jack about things like this so I just let it go crazy, I suppose it's better to have it on than having it shut off and overheat the laptop. New thinkpads have redesigned fans so even when it's at maximum I can barely hear it
I will be following up on the X bug and the fan thing with the appropriate people at the Ubuntu Developer Summit.
The X200 itself
I was attracted to the X200 because it is much cheaper than the X300, which is a tad large for me anyway. I purchased it with 1GB of RAM and will likely bump it up to 4GB prior to UDS. (I usually don't max out RAM from a manufacturer because their prices are usually terrible). I didn't go with an SSD because it was an extra $600 and I would rather wait another 9 months now that Intel has upped the ante with their SSDs.
I've owned an X40 in the past and the X200 is a "widescreen version of the X40/X60". However it does feel bulkier than I think it should, it feels more like a smaller T series than a widescreen X. Still it is quite small and compact though.
Build quality is what you expect from a Thinkpad, it's a tank. I have no qualms about grabbing it from the top of the screen and moving it around (something I wouldn't do on Jill's M1330). The keyboard is what you expect of a Thinkpad, nearly perfect. I wish they would fix the F1/ESC thing though, it's annoying for vim users. The Fn/Ctrl order is different from the hp, so I have to get used to that. I have 3 beefs with the hardware:
- As you can see with the pictures the bezel on the top of the LCD is real thick. Too thick.
- Two of the USB ports are toward the front of the machine, making the "sitting on the couch with a USB key plugged in" use case kind of scary for me. I much would have rather had the USB ports in the back or more towards the rear of the case.
- No LED backlight. That's right; my hp 2510p is a year older and has an LED backlight; this option is only available on the X300. Boo.
Battery life so far has been a tad over 5 hours. Note that I usually don't dim my display when on battery and I also haven't gone through the powertop recommendations as of yet. Performance is excellent (I got the C2D 8600, 2.4ghz), but like I mentioned above I have not maxxed out the RAM so I can't say anything about VM performance just yet. The 160gb 7200rpm drive is quick, no issues with it so I suspect it will run multiple VMs fine. Heat dissipation is great, it doesn't get warm or uncomfortable.
Overall I'm very happy with the X200 and I recommend it. Like all new notebooks there can be some gotchas as far as hardware support in Linux goes, but that usually works itself out after a release. Many thanks to the Thinkwiki and Ubuntu contributors who have documented the quirks and reported bugs.
Blog note: I have no idea why planet keeps bumping my Banshee entry to the top of planet, I promise I am not doing it on purpose, heh.
November 23, 2008
November 21, 2008
November 20, 2008
November 17, 2008
It takes time to make good stuff.
Sometimes longer than we'd like. Over two years ago at a Boston GNOME Summit Aaron Bockover laid out some of his ideas about the future of Banshee. At the time Banshee wasn't very mature, it was in need of some love and new blood. In the room along with us was Gabriel Burt, Miguel de Icaza and his band of mono people, Mike Urbanski, Brandon Hale, and a few others.
Over the course of this session we discussed things like the much-needed play queue, the need to redo a bunch of the guts, better device support, and a myriad of other ideas and thoughts. At the time it seemed so impossible that Banshee would ever get there.
This week Aaron announced Banshee 1.4, and in my view this is the Banshee that we envisioned. Much has changed. Since then Gabriel has been working on Banshee at Novell for a year now, and the Banshee community has grown by leaps and bounds.
In many ways I feel like Banshee 1.4 is what 1.0 should have been. Hindsight is very 20/20, but looking back at the amount of work accomplished by the team (on top of their other work duties) and the solid base that is current Banshee, I think the decision to rework the guts and push through to what we have today has been worth it. I think that getting out 1.0 and 1.2 when they did come out was important, even though some things weren't finished.
So now that we're here ... aaaaahhhhhhhh.
So now what? Well, I for one have been looking forward to this day for a number of reasons. One, I feel that Banshee has now reached a point where it can be boring. By "boring" I mean mature. The big churn is over and now we can concentrate on the sexy little bits.
I myself have been lucky to watch the Ubuntu part of the Banshee community grow. We have hyperair maintaining the Banshee team PPA, which provides Ubuntu users top-notch binaries for running Banshee. Prior to hyperair, there was no one really working on delivering fresh-Banshee to Ubuntu users, so my thanks go out to him. I've literally forgotten how to build Banshee from source. :)
And clearly no one can ever forget Sebastian Dröge's work on not just Banshee, but the entire Mono stack in Ubuntu over the years. He's been off doing awesome things for Collabora, but his contributions to Ubuntu, Debian, and Banshee are very significant. And lastly, my personal bug hero, Andrew Conkling, who has been that "bridge" between Ubuntu and upstream; triaging bugs and ensuring that the right bugs get reported to the Banshee developers and generally kicking serious butt.
I'd also like to thank those of you out there who have reported bugs in Banshee, helped people in IRC, and done general support and advocacy. You're all full of awesome.
November 12, 2008
OpenWeek!
I'd like to thank everyone who participated in Ubuntu Open Week this time around, especially our presenters. For many presenters this was their first Open Week so the variety of talks continues to grow! Some Ars coverage of Mark's talk is here. Logs are posted for your viewing pleasure on the Open Week page.
Special thanks go out to Dylan McCall for handling the calendar attachment so that people can subscribe to the schedule. Also a shout out to the IRC team for their always solid support. Excellent work!
