Thursday, November 02, 2006

Ubuntu is great on the client – It is a MS Vista killer

I have since some year ago running linux (fedora 4) on my server and it works great!
Now I thought it was time to also test running linux on a client computer.

I have test some different Linux distributions, Suse 10, fedora 6 and now also Ubuntu.
Ubuntu was the easiest to install and run, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.10 ­ the Edgy Eft ­ released in October 2006. It was only one CD (in fedora and Suse it was 5 CD) and burned it and install it.

One hour later my Ubuntu pc was up and running with lot of already included software like: open office, firefox 2.0, evolution mail, gaim
(yahoo & icq & MSN). I have also installed skype, jdk 5, Netbeans 5.5, Vmware player, Automatix, Opera (because of the rss-reader) and real player.

To get WEBBRADIO to work at SR, I had to to do this:
1) Install Real Player
2) Uninstall mozilla-­totem (using Synaptic Package Manager)
3) Open a terminal windows and do this:
ln ­sf /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/nphelix.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/nphelix.so
ln ­sf /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/nphelix.xpt ~/.mozilla/plugins/nphelix.xpt

About JDK 5, I found a package in AutoMatix and I install it from there.

About the Netbeans 5.5 installation, it works great the installation.
(I have had some trouble to install Enterprise pack and I have report it and I suppose Sun will fix it soon).
I had to update the file .bash_profile before the installation with this line:
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.08
After that run:
source .bash_profile
sudo ./netbeans-5_5-linux.bin
sudo ./netbeans-mobility-5_5-linux.bin
sudo ./netbeans_cdc-5_5-beta2-linux.bin
The only disappointment is the included SunWireless toolkit 2.2 for CLDC (why not version 2.5beta) in the Netbeans Mobility Pack for CLDC and for the Netbeans Mobility Pack for CDC there was no Sun Wireless toolkit for CDC included.
This could be ok, if it was possible to download it from Sun's Wireless Toolkit web site, but there is nothing more to download for the linux platform. This is really bad!!!

To sum it up:
Ubuntu works great, I will go on using it!
I have installed it on a old laptop with only 256 Mb RAM and 800 MHz CPU, but it is really fast!
One good thing with Ubuntu is that you also get critical updates all the time and this is free!!
No more MS Vista computer for me!
I hope Sun in the future will have better support for the linux platform for Sun Wireless toolkit for CLDC and CDC!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another cool OS is NexentaOS which is basically Ubuntu running on the OpenSolaris kernel. Works like a charm. I really recommend downloading it as an vmware image for playing around with features like DTrace, Zones, ZFS!

Anonymous said...

Hi Ove,

there will be bundled CDC Toolkit 1.0 with MobPack 5.5 for CDC in the final version expected in December.


The WTK 2.5 could not be bundled with MobPack 5.5. The WTK was only Beta. We cannot bundle a beta software with the final release. The WTK version will definitely change for next release (6.0) - it depends on WTK team. they have to produce a final version finally.

Ove Nordström said...

I hope there also will be linux version of Sun wireless toolkit with the release of Netbeans MobPack for CDC in December?

It look like Sun only release beta version of Sun Wireless toolkit, version 2.3 only in beta :-)
-ove

bijit said...

Hi can ayone help me with this?

After i tried installing netbeans it gave me this error:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

The installer is unable to run in graphical mode. Try running the installer with the -console or -silent flag.

Anonymous said...

bijit,
have you tied to run installer under the same user as you'd started X server?
I think you was logged into Linux under user "bijit" but tried to run installer from terminal under another user, Am I right ?

If so, here are solutions :
- run installer under the same user as you are logged into X server
- open the terminal(user "bijit") and allow to open windows on running X server by everybody - use command "xhost +" and try to run installer again

I hope this help you.