Monthly archives of “April 2010”

April 14, 2010

The Kubuntu Aftermath

So, I was trying to rescue a Karmic Koala in distress. I failed at the time, because I didn’t have an up-to-date release of Kubuntu (or Ubuntu, for that matter). So here’s what happened next.

I finally got to borrow a friend’s Kubuntu installation CD, so I booted it up. I poked around in it for a bit, and… alas… there is no such thing as GParted preinstalled inside Kubuntu’s live CD. Lucky for me, I got me an Ubuntu Live CD at hand, also Karmic Koala. Without hesitating, I fired it up, and there it was, Gparted… *drool*

So, I went ahead and just repartitioned the darn virtual disk. By this, I mean I did it in one go, I didn’t stop to apply partition deletions before resizing my root partition and creating a tiny swap partition. One go only. And it worked like a charm.

So there it is, my Kubuntu Karmic Koala now has 5GB of disk space, of which about 1.2GB is free. Enough for now.

April 10, 2010

Saving Koala Karmic with Gutsy Gibbon: A Failed Attempt

DISCLAIMER: The post you are about to read is really boring unless you are a geek like me. You have been warned.

So, I’ve been trying to tune my Kubuntu installation the best I can, scrounging what is left of my unreliable mobile connection. I managed to actually finish doing apt-get dist-upgrade on it, but by the time everything is installed I came across another problem: hard drive space.

I initially setup my virtual machine to have a 4GB hard drive. After a full installation of Kubuntu Koala Karmic, I got around 600MB of free space on it. So, I went ahead and did a full upgrade, after which my free hard drive space immediately dropped to below 100MB. Oh yay!

That said, turned the VM off and tried to edit its settings. I added an extra gigabyte to the existing 4GB virtual hard drive, then booted into Kubuntu again. Oh darn… I forgot that resizing the virtual hard drive merely simulates an increase of physical hard drive size, and to make use of this I had to actually resize the darn partition.

Next, I got my old Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon CD, which I finally found after digging through a pile of old movies and stuff. I launched the live session, got into GParted, and attempted to resize my root partition.

Then another hurdle: GParted could delete my existing extended partition (which contained my swap partition), but when I tried to resize my primary  partition it failed. It says something about the superblock being corrupt, whatever that means.

So I tried doing a workaround: I built my extended partition again, only this time covering the entire free space. I then added a new EXT3 partition and kept my swap at a meager 256MB. Then I tried to boot into Koala Karmic again, and voila, it booted.

But this doesn’t solve the problem that Karmic Koala keeps warning me about low disk space. I can actually tell it not to warn me anymore, but the fact that I only have 120 megs of space in my root partition bothers me. I wouldn’t be able to install pretty much anything…

OK, let’s try this again. Boot into Gutsy Gibbon, and try to redo the partitioning (again).

*By the way, I gotta tell you, booting a live CD takes forever! Using a bootable USB stick is probably a better idea.

Nope. It just won’t do it. I guess Gutsy Gibbon is a bit old to do its trick on newer Kubuntu installations. I’ll just have to wait to get that Kubuntu installation DVD…

April 6, 2010

Going Vintage

Ever since I got my hands on a copy of Kubuntu and successfully installed it as a virtual machine on my Mac OS 10.6.3, I’ve been craving to get my hands on other operating systems. By this, I mean some of the older operating systems. The windows family, for example, ranging from XP (I’ll just skip Vista, not worth the try), 2000, Me, 98, 95, and back as far as Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.xx. Other than that, there are numerous UNIX/Linux-based systems such as OpenSUSE, Mandriva, CentOS, Gentoo, Slackware, FreeBSD, and many more.

The geek in me has taken over…

I just wanted to relive the experience of installing, configuring, and actually using those systems. I wonder if my thesis from my college days will still run on the most current version of Ubuntu, and I wonder if I can still code in VisualBasic 6.0 or C++.

I’d like to more appreciate the fact that our newest operating systems (with all its user-friendliness and advanced technologies that we so often take for granted) are built using those earlier systems. We wouldn’t have Windows 7 today if Microsoft didn’t pull off its gig when it launched Windows 3.11 back then.

So I’m attempting to be a collector of antiquities, and by this I mean vintage software. I hope it’s going to be an exciting ride.

April 3, 2010

Simplicity, Independence, and Best Value

What do you want when you decide to spend a lot of money on taking a trip overseas? Even if it’s only a thousand clicks away, not to the other side of the world, you’d want the trip to be a wonderful experience.

I would want three things.

1. Simplicity

I hate to spend a lot of time discussing issues that don’t really need to be discussed. Things like should you bring a backup toothbrush or how many panties you need to carry with you. We’re grown ups. We can deal with personal preferences ourselves; no need to discuss it with your peers, or even bring it up in the forum.

2. Independence

Independence here has two meanings, and I think both of them are important. First, I want to be independent to chose where I want to go, when, and for how long. I’m not saying that compromises are out of the question; I’m saying that when talks get really tough, going our own ways is probably the best option. Second, I do not want people to go somewhere just because I’m also going there. If I suddenly change my mind, it’ll all get messy and somebody’s going to get upset. Not nice.

3. Best Value

Now, this is closely related to independence. What people value most will differ. Maybe I prefer culinary explorations and heritage trails, while you can’t think of anything but shopping, hi-tech 3D movies, and exhilarating roller-coasters. Well, in this case, as I’ve said before, going our own ways is probably better.

Again, I am not saying that compromises are bad; they’re just bad if they start to take a toll on the fun you should be having. The trade-off here is getting what you want by going it alone, or sacrificing something in favor of someone’s company.

So, let’s keep it simple, independent, and for the best value. Instead of trying to make everyone else do what we want, why not let everyone decide for themselves and get together only when it’s feasible and fun to do so.

Happy traveling!