Phytotron's stupid computer blog

[Tank Program]

I suppose my distinction between a 2D and 3D card is rather arbitrary. Yes, in reality they're both 3D cards, but to my mind they originate in two different technological eras. The early 3D cards (what I'm calling 2D) are characterized by passive heat-sinks, if even that, and are all pretty close together in terms of performance by today's scale. The 3D cards, starting probably with GeForce4/Radeon 9700 start having much greater differences between them, are actively cooled, and could play Half-Life 2. (Note for the non-initiates, the 9600 post-dates the 9700 as the low-price version of the 9800.)

Regrettably, the file directories aren't that similar between Linux and OS X. Generic Unix and Linux, yes, but not so much OS X. Something just have different names, like /Users is /home and /Volumes is /mnt (and now /media). The biggest helper of coming from OS X I think will be that you're probably used to Terminal, and Unix type file systems. By this I mean you know have a better chance of knowing what / is, what ~ is, what files starting with a . mean, etc.

sda5-10 are indeed the logical partitions. The minimum you need are the two Windows partition and one partition for /. The minimum typically recommended includes a fourth partition for swap space (virtual memory). If things go as superficially as hoped you shouldn't even come across this stuff. Doesn't hurt to know it though. I think you've got a spectacularly good grasp for someone who hasn't even actually really used Linux yet. I've known people who have Linux installed who actually knew less. You're off to a good start.

By Windows-only hardware, I'm referring to the plethora of cheap devices from the late-90s and early -00s that were developed for people with Windows computers. Cheap USB scanners and printers are a common example. Then there are the random things like SIM-card readers, or the early technologies like WiFI adapters from that period. They were developed only with Windows users in mind and will not work with anything else. Hardware like this is much less common now, thanks to USB and standardized drivers, but I still come across stuff that I wish I could use but can't, because it's designed Windows. TV capture cards are another good example. Another way to express this is as any device that doesn't have a Linux driver.

USB keys are a good transfer mechanism for the short term, but I don't like the idea of leaving important things only on them. It's very easy to loose data that way. Literally. The other big weakness is that they are historically slow. Only just now are fast keys becoming inexpensive. So if you're copying say 100 MB, you can easily be waiting a minute. Copying to another partition on the disk, you're looking at 5 seconds. Not such an issue for small stuff, but if you scale up for larger files/folders...

[Phytotron]

Good posts.

Yeah, skip the complicated bit.

Here's the simple bit:

1. Install Windows. Reformat the drive and put Windows on a 500GB partition. (If need be, copy the license key from the bottom of the computer so you can input it into the appropriate place)
2. Install Ubuntu in all remaining space, and let IT figure out how to partition you. (It'll give you a swap partition and a / partition and that's all you need. Everything else is just nerd boner-poking)
3. Play with your new computers (since, at that point, you will have two computers).

That's kinda what I was thinking—maybe a smaller partition for Windows. A couple questions:
1) It comes with Windows pre-installed, of course. You think it's better just to leave that and try to shrink it if necessary, or replace it altogether using a recovery disc (assuming I can get one)? Guides suggest the latter may be preferable, for the reasons I gave earlier.
2) Will Windows and Linux share the same swap? I don't see two swaps in the examples given, so I'm assuming so. If so, is there anything to be done to make sure they both know to use it, or is it just automatic?

Something just have different names, like /Users is /home and /Volumes is /mnt (and now /media). ...and Unix type file systems. By this I mean you know have a better chance of knowing... what ~ is

Yeah, that's mostly what I meant. Heck, even the way Armagetron is placed on Macs. Like I said, "a little," heh. To wit:

The biggest helper of coming from OS X I think will be that you're probably used to Terminal

Well, not so much. I'm aware of its existence, heh, but I've only used it a handful of times. A few times were back before dlh made the Armagetron recorder; I recall Jonathan gave me the commands to make debug recordings. A couple instances were those silly things where you could talk to ALICE bot or Marvin the Paranoid Android, heh. Most recent was checking the md5 hash things when I downloaded Ubuntu and MINT.

what / is, ...what files starting with a . mean, etc.

Nope, not really. But I'll be continuing the reading. Credit the Ubuntu support pages for most of what I've learned so far. It definitely has its "ugh...what?" programmer frimfram moments, but generally it's fairly clear and layman(ish)-friendly.

The minimum you need are the two Windows partition and one partition for /. The minimum typically recommended includes a fourth partition for swap space (virtual memory).

Wait, what two Windows? I noticed epsy has a "SYSTEM" partition in front of Windows as well. Maybe I'll see this once I get the computer up and running. Should arrive tomorrow.


- Hey, turns out that OSX 10.7 Lion apparently has built-in read-only support for NTFS drives—at least external drives; I dunno about connecting directly to another computer. Trying to get write support is where it gets "painful," in terms of having to use the Terminal or a separate program to make it happen, and under advisement of precaution that "you better know what you're doing because it can screw things up." But, Lion should recognize an NTFS drive and read from it automatically. Couple that with Ubuntu's supposed built-in read-only support for HFS+ drives and I'm covered. Couldn't back up to a common drive, but transferring files from one to the other should be fine—supposedly.

- Here's something I haven't found an answer to. So, we have a cable modem with the DHCP. Every time I've plugged it into a different computer (both Mac and Windows) I've had to reset the modem in order for the computer to recognize it—or it to recognize the computer, whichever direction it goes. You think I should do this before trying to install Ubuntu, since it needs (or at least, is easiest accomplished with) an internet connection? And how might that impact dual booting?

- USB key, pen drive, thumb drive. Come on, people. Is this regional, like "flashlight" and "torch?"

[Jonathan]

Will Windows and Linux share the same swap? I don't see two swaps in the examples given, so I'm assuming so. If so, is there anything to be done to make sure they both know to use it, or is it just automatic?

Using a swap partition only seems to be common on Linux. OS X and Windows both use ordinary files. You can probably fiddle with it if you want to, but you don't need to by any means.

- Here's something I haven't found and answer to. So, we have a cable modem with the DHCP. Every time I've plugged it into a different computer (both Mac and Windows) I've had to reset the modem in order for the computer to recognize it—or it to recognize the computer, whichever direction it goes. You think I should do this before trying to install Ubuntu, since it needs (or at least, is easiest accomplished with) an internet connection? And how might that impact dual booting?

Do you happen to know if it's a plain modem or also a NAT router or something of the sort? What does your computer's IP address look like? If it's one of 10.x.x.x, 172.16-31.x.x, 192.168.x.x, it is a NAT. 169.254.x.x means DHCP failed that time. If it's something else it's probably a public Internet address, which I think you may not want to post for all to see. But what matters is the classification, which is much less revealing. Does your address fit in one of those ranges? Does googling "what is my ip" or going to a web site like whatismyip.com yield the same result as your network settings? (different = positive for NAT)

You can probably resolve it the way you do now while installing or dual booting. I'd just sort it out or at least streamline it because I find it hard to imagine a computer without an Internet connection that's simply always there.

- USB key, pen drive, thumb drive. Come on, people. Is this regional, like "flashlight" and "torch?"

It's religion. You could be stoned for apostasy, so few change the name of their holy artifacts.

[sinewav]

I wanted to post about this cool custom Linux Mint computer and this thread is better than making a new one (since it's loosely related). Had this product existed a year ago I would have bought it immediately, and I still might in the future. It's a small, powerful computer with a unique cooling system that makes it almost completely silent. This is something I've always wanted for working on music. If I suddenly get a good job I'll be buying it right away.

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2055

It reminds me of the Mac-Mini.

[Phytotron]

I also noticed they (Mint) recently released an actual desktop mini-computer, which is neat, but the price would defeat my purposes.

"Nettop," is I guess what they're calling those kinds of designs. Have you seen some of the other companies that sell computers with Linux pre-installed? Most are more expensive, though, especially for small things. And they all seem to be shooting for a "boutique" kind of market, having all the latest-greatest and high-end hardware. Most are more expensive than Macs.

Using a swap partition only seems to be common on Linux. OS X and Windows both use ordinary files. You can probably fiddle with it if you want to, but you don't need to by any means.

Ah, for some reason I thought Windows normally used a swap as well. Maybe it did years ago?

As for the modem, um, PM.

You can probably resolve it the way you do now while installing or dual booting.

Ugh, hassle. That means unplugging the modem, pulling the battery, waiting a couple minutes, revert, wait for it to reset.

I'd just sort it out or at least streamline it because I find it hard to imagine a computer without an Internet connection that's simply always there.

What do you mean?


- Realised that Linux uses ext4, not NTFS. Or rather, it can use NTFS, but ext4 is preferred for whatever performance reasons. So, hmm. I suppose an eventual solution might be to have an external drive formatted NTFS to back up files from both Windows and Ubuntu (which has built-in ability to read/write), and then read from that with Lion. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[Jonathan]

Using a swap partition only seems to be common on Linux. OS X and Windows both use ordinary files. You can probably fiddle with it if you want to, but you don't need to by any means.

Ah, for some reason I thought Windows normally used a swap as well. Maybe it did years ago?

I believe that's just a swap file.

As for the modem, um, PM.

The modem turned out to be just a modem.

You can probably resolve it the way you do now while installing or dual booting.

Ugh, hassle. That means unplugging the modem, pulling the battery, waiting a couple minutes, revert, wait for it to reset.

Okay, it just became slightly more annoying than I thought. Does waiting for a few minutes without resetting anything allow another computer to connect? It's also possible that dual-booting just works, as your MAC address stays the same. But no a priori promises on that.

I'd just sort it out or at least streamline it because I find it hard to imagine a computer without an Internet connection that's simply always there.

What do you mean?

To be more concrete, I'd suggest putting a NAT router between the modem and the computers. They're quite cheap. But I never know what you're willing to get.

[Jonathan]

Just in case someone following this thread remembered my now invalidated advice:

Confirmed: Mountain Lion sends some 64-bit Macs gently into that good night

Apparently a Core 2 alone won't let you run Mountain Lion. You need 64-bit firmware as well as a GPU with 64-bit drivers. There's always a way to obsolete hardware.

[Phytotron]

Lame, but at the same time, how well would Mountain Lion or even Lion run on even the top-tier Core 2 Duos? Would you be going there anyway?

All that modem stuff, putting that in my back pocket for now. Going to do some more reading and set up the computer and see what happens first. Because, bleh, that's just another layer of ugh to deal with.

[Phytotron]

So, after a few days of mental decompression, I realised the obvious: that when it comes to the idea of dual-booting, I'm faced with the prospect of having to learn two whole new OS's at the same time, or at least in series. What am I thinking? I've used Windows plenty of times over the years, but I've never had to maintain Windows, and that's a whole 'nuther thing—and a whole 'nuther hassle, possibly more so than learning Ubuntu. Maybe it would be handy to have Windows on hand, but I've gotten on just fine without it all these years. And maybe I did pay the "Windows Tax," but I will still get the "free" (as in, already paid-for but inexplicably not included) disk package (although I'm still not entirely clear on whether a recovery disc can actually do a clean install, or if there needs to be something already in place for it to recover from/to/whatever). Plus, I'm all nervous about malware. And despise Microsoft. A lot.

So, now I'm thinking I'm going to use Windows long enough to download and burn the Ubuntu iso, use the LiveCD a few times to make sure all the hardware is supported, then do a clean install.

But, don't you all feel like you wasted your time on the dual boot stuff. There's a lot of other good, helpful information in there along the way, such as on partitioning. Depending on what I see in the graphical installer, I may even add some of those extra partitions you all noted. That leads to another question: Considering I have this "ungodly huge" 1 TB hard drive, would it make sense to make my partitions (however I end up doing it) on the more sensibly sized side so that it performs more quickly? And I guess just leave a large portion, as much as half (maybe more?), of the drive unallocated? You can always allocate that to a new partition(s) later, right? 'Course, there's that primary partition limitation, which would require some forethought, so, hmm....

And with respect to the dual-boot stuff specifically, who knows, maybe some time down the line I'll add a different Linux distro on there. I dunno why right now, heh, but hey, it's a possibility.

[Jonathan]

That leads to another question: Considering I have this "ungodly huge" 1 TB hard drive, would it make sense to make my partitions (however I end up doing it) on the more sensibly sized side so that it performs more quickly?

The beginning/outside of the disk is actually slightly faster. If you want to keep two operating systems around there, the first partition must necessarily be smaller. Most users probably won't notice a real difference, though. The effect isn't even that prominent until you near the very end of the disk (at which point your disk is probably full enough to have more fragmentation on a smaller partition). I'd rather have a lot of space available, should I ever find a need for it, as I don't like dealing with multiple partitions. On the other hand, a bit of scratch space to be allocated later can be helpful if you ever need something separate from existing partitions.

In the end I think it's more important that it feels right to you. Most of the time we're talking about potential benefits, not real perceptible benefits.

And I guess just leave a large portion, as much as half (maybe more?), of the drive unallocated? You can always allocate that to a new partition(s) later, right? 'Course, there's that primary partition limitation, which would require some forethought, so, hmm....

Yes, you can create new partitions in unallocated space. Extended partitions shouldn't be a potential problem if you don't need to boot from them.

[Phytotron]

Yeah. Maybe I'll create root (primary), swap and home (logical) up to 500GB. Maybe throw a FAT32 in or onto there. Leave the rest unallocated for now. Partitioning looks easy enough to set up using the graphical installer, especially if you're doing it all clean.


Speaking of swap, I'm reading a lot of different takes on that. Here again, I think I'm running into some dated documentation. At the same time they'll recommend it be at least equal to twice physical RAM, but also doesn't need to be more than 2GB (which they usually characterize as a huge amount of RAM). I'll have 6GB RAM, and obviously plenty of hard disk space. Messiness.


By the way, further clarification for anyone interested. So, I already mentioned that Ubuntu (and I assume any other Linux distros with the same kernel) has built-in read-only support for HFS+ volumes. I also mentioned that writing to HFS+ was trickier and riskier. But, that's with those that are journaled. Apparently, though, it does have built-in write support for non-journaled HFS+. If I understand correctly. Obviously, you wouldn't want to disable journaling on your main drive, or even main backup. But you could conceivably have a non-journaled HFS+ external drive common to OSX and Linux. So, a dedicated journaled HFS+ Mac backup, a dedicated ext4 Linux backup, and a common non-journaled HFS+ backup. Or I suppose one big drive partitioned. Redundancy, eh.

There's also Paragon ExtFS for Mac OS X, which is said to work like a charm, but it's $40 and not yet available for Lion.

[Lucifer]

Ignore the part about 2GB maximum swap, it's obviously dated. There was a time when it said 1GB, and 512MB, etc. Make sure the graphical installer gives you at least 15GB of swap space. You really do need to follow the 2xRAM rule, and a little extra don't hurt one bit. If you go as high as 4x, then you have plenty of space for apps and stuff, and plenty of space for emergency hibernating, but unless it's a laptop, you generally don't worry about hibernating.

I had actually thought about "Why would a Mac user want to dual boot windows and linux? He'll hate it!" But I've been pretty busy with the move and the new job and all that.

As far as partitioning goes, I've finally reached a point where I really feel like making more than a / and swap on one hard drive really is a waste of time. It's not that there aren't any potential benefits, as Jonathan points out, it's just that hard drives are so freakin' cheap that if you want a /home partition, just buy another hard drive and have a /home drive that you can backup in a HD image form and reimage when you need to restore it. The use of a /usr partition is broken by /usr/local being under /usr, and seems to me to be only useful when you want to share apps across the network. /var as a partition is fine, but really ought to be on a ultra-fast hard drive, whereas /home can be on a reasonably slow one. /etc as a partition is dumb, just back it up in a tarball every week or so. Also use a script to get the list of installed packages. When you restore from backup, you just install the list of installed packages, then restore /home and /etc from backup. (/var if you use any databases, we can talk about this later)

The file hierarchy used to be neat and orderly, but now it just annoys me. I want to make a new one. I want to make my own OS again. Damn. I did NOT need to be bit by that bug just now.

[Phytotron]

Heh, I haven't even used Linux yet and I'm looking at some of these various distros and thinking, "man, what I'd like to have is that modified a little, move this, remove that, add this other thing." Of course, in my case I'm referring primarily to GUI elements, and I understand quite a bit of that is in fact configurable. Not quite as much with Unity, though. But maybe another. Also, Miller Columns, dag nabbit!

Yeah, I noticed a lot of people on the Ubuntu forums and elsewhere are recommending just a / and swap these days. But most are saying swap only be physical RAM plus some fudge room; so, maybe 6.1 in my case. I dunno; it's not like I'm short on space. [EDIT: Originally, Oh yeah, apparently the 2GB max also relates to 32-bit; it doesn't recognize RAM above 2GB, apparently, which you probably know. Nevermind, that's 4GB. Duh.] They also suggest / be around 15GB, and that's making room for large applications. But again, plenty of room here, so I may go larger, providing that won't negatively impact speed. It's too bad that different distros can't share the same home folder. But, the advantage of my still making a separate partition for it may be that if I screw up Ubuntu itself, home will be preserved. Better safe than sorry, eh.


Anyway, I finally got around to setting up the computer this weekend. The tower itself is just dandy, silent except for a quiet rumble from the hard drive which reminds me of rain on metal--in fact, with my headphones on there were a few times at night it fooled me into looking to see if it was raining, heh. I don't know why they call this a mini tower, though. Seems pretty normal sized to me, especially front-to-back, takes up all but about 4" of my desk. (I have to have it on the desk so my headphones will reach. May look to resolve that later.) Keyboard and mouse are rather cheapo. And while I accept I have to adjust to the different layout, I want my damn volume keys! Stupid, useless extra Dell software installed. Get out of my face!

On the other hand, I think--in fact, for reasons you'll understand in a moment, I hope--that this monitor is messed up. First, it has a good bit of backlight bleeding, especially along the top and bottom edges, comes in a good half-inch. But the biggest problem is the viewing angle. This thing claims to have a 170° (damn, the Windoze method of entering special characters is stupid sucky) viewing angle, but I tell you it ain't even a few degrees. I can set the screen tilt 90° to the top of the desk, sit straight up, eyes level with the top quarter of the screen, at any distance, and there's an obvious gradient of light to dark from the bottom to the top. It's severely pronounced if using a solid-color desktop; a true gradient. And then against white you can see that the lower, lighter part has a light blue cast, and the upper, darker part has a dingy yellow cast. Barely move my head and the gradient goes with it. I can't even calibrate the gamma on this thing. For anyone unfamiliar with the Windows display calibration wizard, one of the first things it has you do is adjust gamma using this image:

Gamma square.PNG (51.17 KiB) Viewed 2862 times

You're not supposed to be able to see a dot, light or dark, in the center of each circle. But if I adjust the middle (horizontal) row to be correct, the lower row shows dark dots, the upper row light dots. That square is only about a third the horizontal length of the monitor. This can't be right. There also appears to be a slight amount of vertical banding, only visible against/under (whatever) a washed out or black image.

So, I gave Dell a ring. Yadda yadda, they're sending me a new monitor that should arrive Wednesday, then they're going to call Thursday to see how it looks. So, as I said, I'm hoping that this one is in fact messed up. Surely this model can't be this poor. That Apple Cinema Display is ten years old and blows this thing away. Grr.

[Jonathan]

That's cheap TN panels for you. It could be slightly better, but for the most part it's inherent to TN. Horizontally they do relatively well, mostly leaving a color cast. That explains the viewing angle, which is really the angle where the contrast ratio is 5 or 10. That isn't a very satisfying cutoff, not to mention a brain-dead contrast measurement at extreme angles doesn't tell you much about the display quality. But that's just the horizontal. The vertical is where all hell breaks loose. And then there's strange color curves, regardless of angle. That's why I spoke of good LCD panels. TN is as low as an LCD can go.

[Phytotron]

Well, as I mentioned earlier it came as part of a bundle, and according to all the reviews I read (professional), it was the best of the three on offer. I don't understand how professional reviewers could give this the kind of ratings they did if it is in fact just this bad by nature. I mean, it's nowhere close to subtle how bad it is.

We'll see with the next one, I guess. If it's as bad, I don't know what to do. I can't settle with this. How could I do anything image-related? I assume I'm stuck with it since it was part of the bundle; doubt I could get a refund of full-retail value (not to mention restocking fee). And besides, even if I could flip it, the trouble is getting something better means something more expensive, which defeats the purpose of all this. Sigh.

As a not-incidental aside, that does contribute to this observation: All the gasbaggery about Macs being more expensive than equivalent PC's is a myth.