{LinuxHole}

Initially, I thought this was a bad thing. But having considered the matter I think that although it's a shame in some respects it is probably a good move by Opera. Why? Because Unite is dependent on everyone you want to communicate or share files with using Opera, and, in my case this is not the case. Most people I need to communicate with or share files with do not use Opera (their loss) and there are viable alternatives.

I remember when a certain IT guy introduced me to Opera (circa.2002) and I was impressed with it's general performance. I was also impressed when Opera announced with great pomp and circumstance the arrival of Unite. However, the dream did not live up to the reality and I haven't used Unite half as much as I thought I would. The same can be said for Widgets. I'm a little sad about the demise of Voice, although, I believe, this was only available in English and was under maintained and, again, there are alternative methods.

Shame? Yeah! kinda but if you don't try you don't innovate and I'm glad Opera have decided to stop flogging a dead horse and move on. I hope Opera concentrate on the internet browsing experience and maybe develop a few move applications (ie. stand alone email, bit-torrent, client, etc) and don't put all their eggs in one basket.

Opera's announcement and comments by users. link

I eventually got Lubuntu 12.04 to install dual booting with Ubuntu 11.10. During install I allowed the installer to format the swap partition and I think doing this changed the Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) of that partition. This meant when I booted into Ubuntu I got a 'Press S to skip mount or M for manual recovery' message during boot. I then noticed that the swap partition was not being used.

To rectify the problem I opened a Terminal window and entered

$ sudo blkid

This listed all my partitions UUID's

I then opened leafpad to check/edit fstab

$ sudo leafpad /etc/fstab

Sure enough I noticed the UUID of the listed swap partition did not match the one shown using 'blkid'. All I had to do was edit the listed UUID to match then save the fstab file. I then rebooted and found the error message had gone and that swap was all working nicely again.

The moral of this story is - if you are dual booting and sharing a swap partition DO NOT allow the installer to format the swap partition.

My Acer ZG8 netbook was a bargain when I bought it around the time of Windows 7 appearing, it had Windows XP installed and was in a sale and was cheap enough that I could snap it up & have enough cash left over for a neoprene case. I used the netbook with Windows XP for a month or so and then I decided to install Ubuntu, which it has run ever since. I have generally stuck with the Ubuntu's default desktop but since Unity (which I love) landed, my netbook's 1GB of RAM is not quite enough to cope with all the bells and whistles a desktop environment like Unity contains. The netbook is only upgradeable to 2GB of RAM, and it's a right bugger of a job to install, so I started thinking about lighter Linux distro's.

Being I'm familiar with Ubuntu and because this netbook is a day-to-day device rather than just a test machine I decided to stick with *buntu. I have downloaded Xubuntu and Lubuntu and I am currently testing them on a Live USB drive. Initial feelings are positive for both. However, I am becoming more attached to Lubuntu and the LXDE desktop and Openbox window manager it is very quick and customisable. It doesn't have the bling of the Unity or Gnome3 desktop but it has definitely put a spring back into my netbook's step.

I'm beginning to think that if I'm going to sacrifice the 3D visuals and home comforts of the default Ubuntu for performance I may as well go the whole hog and install the lightest Ubuntu desktop easily available. So far Lubuntu's LXDE environment doesn't feel as bland as I'd expected. Plenty of useful applications are installed as default. I would have expected Firefox over Chromium browser, but I would install Opera anyway. Synaptic package manager is there out-of-the-box which I applaud.

I have been running ubuntu 11.10 since beta1 and apart from a few niggling issues. CCSM and misbehaving unity launcher being my personal foes. Recently things had settled down into a completely usable system. So I thought it was time to break it again.

Immediately, I thought, load gnome-shell that should do it. My experience of running the gnome3 desktop under the gnome2 based ubuntu 11.04 had been, ...erm 'unfavorable'. I don't want to seem like a Unity fan-boy here either, as I have used gnome3 desktop in Fedora 15 and liked it, but I didn't get a fair chance to access its usability over a period of time. I have been using Ubuntu's Unity desktop since 11.04 was launched and have adopted it as my favorite gnome desktop. That mainly comes down to the fact I prefer Ubuntu as my operating system and Unity has become their default desktop and I have been to lazy to change it.

Anyway, probably because ubuntu 11.10 is now gnome3 native, it turned out installing the Gnome3 desktop is now as easy a searching for 'gnome-shell' in Ubuntu's software centre and clicking install. It even worked flawlessly. On reboot I simply logged in to the gnome desktop and 'low-and-behold' there appeared before me a functioning gnome3 desktop in Ubuntu.

I have decided to use gnome-shell for the next week before I make any hard and fast opinions, but, so far it feels very alien. It does seem, however, faster than Unity.


Here is my week with gnome-shell:

Day 1
I have managed to get an ambiance style theme to work after installing gnome-tweak-tool from the repos. I'm not keen on the default gnome 3 desktop theme at all. It is nice to be customising themes again something not particularly possible yet in Unity. The desktop looks quite slick and I like the Activies animation, dropdown menus & notifications from Gwibber. Having to hold the Alt key to select power-off is a pain, its turned a one-hand action into a two hand action, maybe thats the point but I just don't get it. Moving from window to window or desktop to desktop is snappy and it feels very responsive. However it's a shame you have to mouse over top left to reveal different desktops and then select a desktop from the desktop switcher that is on the far right of the screen it just seems like the cursor is doing more screen-miles than necessary. In Unity the desktop switcher is on the launcher and that feels like a better arrangement to me. Also, I don't like having to mouse over top-left of the screen to reveal open windows and bring up the dock I prefer the mouse over edge of screen approach, that Unity seems to have adopted, it feels like a more natural way to reveal a 'dock'.

Day 2
I'm getting used to the interface. Whilst I'm perhaps not totally up to speed I'm finding it more familiar. I discovered the Wikipedia and Google search buttons at the bottom of the Activities search results, hopefully its possible to customise these or add others. Nice idea though! I have also started using the <super> key to bring up the Activities menu screen rather than mousing to the top left of the screen. I have also found an extension that can move the hot-corner to the right hand side. Third party extensions are however liable to breakages when gnome-shell changes, so I'll try and avoid them for now. one nice discovery was that gnome-shell uses CSS theming so there's a real chance for me to get tinkering with theme alterations, etc.

Day 3
I have this instance of Ubuntu installed on my netbook and the gnome 3 desktop works well on a small screen and with the big icons I can see it lending itself well to a touchscreen/tablet PC. Today is also the release day of Ubuntu 11.10 and I resisted booting into Unity to see if there had been any last changes. Oh! yeah, I need to find the quickest way to the Rubbish Bin - I must be missing something here?

Day 4
Although I have been impressed with the speed of the gnome 3 desktop and since I started using it I have found no bugs. I think Unity is the better looking.

Day 5
I have been using my netbook out and about today.One thing I have noticed is the power consumption of Ubuntu 11.10 is not improved noticably by running the gnome 3 desktop instead of Unity. However, I am starting to think the battery in my netbook which has been used constantly for 18 months or more is as much to blame for decrease in battery-life as Ubuntu.

Day 6
Today I have realised I am missing the Unity menu bar integration. The screen real-estate saved on a 10" is appreciated.

Day 7
Last day of gnome 3 desktop diary. Gnome 3 offers a perfectly usable alternative to the default Ubuntu 11.10 Unity desktop. Its fast, seemingly stable and has many nice features. Whether I prefer it to Unity or not I'm not sure. I think in my case Unity probably comes out a little ahead. I'll let you know when I boot back into Unity. But I know one thing. I'm not one of those people who will constantly lament the demise of the classic Gnome 2 desktop.

I updated my Acer One netbook from Ubuntu version 10.04 Lucid Lynx to 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. It turned out to be a bit of a slog. My initial upgrade from Lucid Lynx 10.04 failed and left the system unable to boot. Luckily everything was backed up so undeterred I reinstalled Ubuntu 10.10. This time everything seemed to go well except that on boot up I received the error message 'Modprobe: Fatal: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic/modules.dep: no such file or directory.' Looking in to the issue it seemed I wasn't unique in having this problem, but, on researching it further I discovered it remained unresolved. Although there seemed to be no other side-effects and Ubuntu was apparently running fine, I was concerned what related issues I may discover further down the line. So being I had a 'virgin' install of Ubuntu, with little time spent installing software and tweaking stuff, I decided to go for a another fresh install. This went fine and I was eventually up and running again. Maverick Meerkat is superb and I am now very happy and I have no other problems. Next job is to update my desktop.

The Modprobe issue is discussed here: Ubuntu Forums