However now that I am older and… well just older I find myself caring much less about who makes the software, and more about whether it works or not. In the end that is what’s important.

For example, I wanted to build a home server and I automatically went for Ubuntu server. I fought to get the printer working, then fought to get CUPS working, then Samba etc. I know that Linux could do everything I wanted, but every feature I wanted require setup and time on my part. In the end I only had a Print server and a very simple Samba share.

In the end I bought Windows Home Server for $99.00 with the hardware I used for the server. So far it is doing everything I want, plus with add-ins seems to offer many options for expansion. I will go into Windows Home Server a little more in a later post.

I think the point I am trying to make is that I am trying not to judge products on who makes it. Just because Microsoft makes something does not make it bad, and just because something is Apple or Linux does not make it the best solution. With information reviews, and other peoples experiences so readily available we can make informed choices about products and rely less on brands.

Arch Linux?

For the past year or so I have been using Ubuntu nearly exclusively and have been quite happy with everything. Before that I was an pretty happy Slackware user. Ubuntu won me over with the amount of documentation, polished install and interface, and upto date releases.

However with this new laptop Fiesty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04) would not install at all, the Alpha version of Gutsy Gibon got further but crashed. That is when Arch Linux was recommenced to me on notebookreview.com and I decided to give it a try.

My first thought when I saw the installer and read some of the documentation was that Arch is like Slackware in philosophy, but with a little more focus on stability and more on keeping things fresh. They let you keep your disto a light or heavy as you like, but they also make you work for it.

Linux on the Dell XPS M1330

The install was actually pretty easy, I just had to select the legacy_ide option while booting so that the installer could see my CDROM Drive. After that everything was pretty straight forward, I just did a base install with the plan of installing other packages later.

After install the first thing I did was update Xorg to version 1.3 and install the latest drivers for the Intel X3100 graphics. After that I just had to play with the xorg.conf file a little to use the correct driver, and get the correct resolution etc. After that X looked really good on the system.

The main feature of Arch linux, and for me is also it’s biggest downfall, is the amount of user customization. After installing the base system and getting X working I realized that nearly none of the other features I needed were installed or configured yet.

For example, I have a little problem with the CPU making a whining noise. It was replaced in linux by a more constant high pitched whine, so I had a pretty good idea that Speedstep was not working yet. So I had to manually install the cpufreq kernel module, and configure it by hand.

Now that is what Arch seems to be all about, but when you have a long list of features you need for a notebook computer it can be very daunting. The prospect of having to install and configure everything from power management to the media buttons was not something I looked forward too.

In all I think the main reason I was able to install Arch over the few other distros I tried was due to the fact that Arch just released a new version. As new releases of other distributions come out I think the install on new hardware like the M1330 will become easy.

For now I am going to continue playing with Linux. Right now I am downloading Slackware 12, and OpenSuse beta. But I think I will be waiting for Ubuntu 7.10 to come out.

After following most of the steps in the tutorial, and improvising a little, I came up with something I was pretty happy with. I decided to take a slightly more clean cut and artificial look that Vlad did. That clean look basically means no stitches for now.

Obviously these wallpapers are a lot more simplistic that the Vlads, but I actually like the simplistic look and just enjoy the texture of the denim on screen.

Anyway, hope some of you enjoy it. (Note: Read the entire post to see the attachments).

I especially like the new ability to group windows together, and flip them around like each window is on the back the other. The Linux desktop is really coming into it’s own right now, if only it could get better application support!

Now that I have a bunch of Adobe products installed on my main system Linux has pretty much dropped out as an option for me. When you do not rely on a specific set of applications to do your everyday work it’s a lot easier to pick and choose OS’s.

That being said I still love to use Linux and I am planning on buying a laptop very soon mainly so that I can have a Linux system again. Then I can use my desktop for work related stuff, and use my laptop for everything else.

Here is a new update on the continuing struggle to get Linux running on an Intel P965 motherboard with the JMicron PATA controller.

There have been two more patches commited to fix the problem. The main patch has been added to Edgy Eft which should allow the user to access their PATA drives connected to the JMicron chip. A similar patch has also been applied to the Dapper Kernel so it should now be possible to create a custom Ubuntu install cd with the new updated Dapper cd and install from there.

Hopefully this also means that Ubuntu will have support out of the box with the next release.

Also if this Kernel gets backported to the Dapper branch then we maybe able to create a custom install cd with the new kernel, and any other custom packages you may want. Then get dapper running on the new system.

If you are one of the few people who went to all the trouble of using one of the work arounds to get Ubuntu Dapper running on your P965 motherboard, then you should be able to use a backported kernel to support it.

Ever since the Core 2 Duo was announced I have been planning on building a new system around it and then using Linux as my main system on it. That however is proving to be a bit harder to do that I would have liked.

I was starting to think that Linux was over the hump when it came to basic hardware compatibility. Even it the main distros did not support all your obscure hardware like USB webcams, or TV tuner cards, you could pretty much install Linux on any system you got. However with the new Core 2 Duo systems that has changed.

My System

After reading a bunch of hardware reviews, and opinions my personal motherboard chipset of choice is Intel’s P965. The P975 chipset is very expensive for a motherboard that is now a generation behind, and the P945 chipset is designed for lower end systems and does not pair well with a Core 2 Duo. The P965 has a nice compromise of the latest technologies and price.

I am still holding out hope for the NVidia NForce 570 or 590 chipsets, but initial reviews of the ASUS motherboard build around the 570 chipset are not looking good.

So I would like a P965 motherboard to be paired with my Core 2 Duo and run Linux on it. Nothing else fancy, just gigabit ethernet, a decent graphics card, maybe raid, and a sound card. Basically I want a fast processor for music encoding, video playback/encoding, and source code compiling.

The Problem

However, somewhere along the line the decision was made by the Linux kernel development community to not add support for the JMicron JMB368 chip that pretty much every P965 motherboard is using to provide PATA drive support. Because there is currently no Kernel support for this chip you can not easily install Linux on any system if you have a PATA DVD-Rom drive or Hard-drive. With no DVD you can not install Linux unless you try doing a network boot, or use USB drives etc. But that is not practical for most people.

The Solution

At the moment there is no solution…it seems that some patches are being added to the very latest bleeding edge Kernels, which are not ready for prime time yet. Edgy Eft Knot 2 does not seem to support the JMicron chip yet either. So right now I am stuck in limbo. I can either go for another motherboard based on a chipset that is either more expensive or not as powerful as my first choice, stick with AMD, or wait and see.

Right now I am in a holding pattern until Edgy Eft is released. If it still does not support one of the most popular Core 2 Duo motherboards then I will probably just go with a AMD Athlon64 X2 and get great Linux support.

Hopefully the ASUS Nforce 570 board is just a fluke and other boards with be screamers, that support high voltage DDR2 RAM and overclock as well as the P965 boards do. That will be a nice solution.

Final Thoughts

It was very sad when I started seeing these problems crop up. I was days away from building my new system when the first problems with the P965 motherboards first started. Linux has prided itself on running on everything, and that is one of the best things about it. I was really hoping that the time had past where I had to spend hours researching each component on my new system to see if it will work well with Linux, but it seems that we are still not quite there.

What really pisses me off though is that the standard WindowsXP installer can see the chip by default!!! I mean come on if WindowsXP installer from several years ago has support for a PATA chip there is no reason Linux should not have it.

My Current fav Window Border is Clearlooks With a Cherry on Top with the Unofficial Tango Icon theme. With the new version of Gnome (2.16) they are moving more to the Tango icon set which is great. The icons just look great.

It now seems that they have all the basic functionality in place to make a full replacement of sysvinit. With my initial review I was a little concerned when I realized you could not easily shut down or restart your system using Upstart. Now that have that functionality the system really does look like it will be ready for the release of 6.10.

Personally I can not wait, I like change it gives you something to look forward too. Far too many Linux distros are stagnating recently, just release updates to programs that have been around for many years. That stability is great for servers, but for desktop systems they thrive on change. Sometimes it is good to shake things up a little.

*Update 9/12/2006: Fixed a silly typo where I said upstart “is not ready” when I meant to say upstart “is now ready.” Big difference.