Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Standing room only and somebody yelled 'Fire!!'

Yes folks, the mad rush to download the new Ubuntu 8.04 is on and I jumped into the fray. Of course I used bit torrent like a good boy and it all went smoothly. I installed the 64-bit Xubuntu on my main machine, an HP Pavilion desktop, 2.20 ghz AMD Athlon 64, 512kb memory and 80gig HD and Nvidia Geforce 5200 video card. It is not extreme at all and the install was slow but perfect. Like I said previously, there were some typical 64-bit issues with Firefox and Flash but they are being worked out. I am now able to view flash movies but still I can't download any. In the Ubuntu repositories, there is Gnash and swfdec, which are the two Flash choices available, but I don't know if they are 64-bit or 32-bit. I do know that if they are 32-bit, they require a nspluginwrapper to let them work in a 64-bit Firefox browser. I installed them and don't recall installing the wrapper. I will have to peek inside to see what was installed. Anyway, at least the video watching problem is solved. I still don't understand why the download extensions for Firefox don't work. I even installed SeaMonkey, which is the Mozilla continuation of Netscape browser (very nice). Download extensions won't even install for SeaMonkey. Alas, so much mystery!!
My second computer is one I pieced together, a 850mgz AMD Duron, 256mb, 20gig HD and ATI Radeon 7200 video card. For it I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04 and wanted to see just how long it took to install. I can't tell you because it hung. When the install reach the point of configuring the locales, it hung and I had to go to work, so I shut her down. The saga continues..........
The trauma fuels a discussion as to whether it is more worthwhile to install 32-bit over the 64-bit versions, even on 64-bit hardware. Opinions vary but in reality 32-bit hardware is slowly being replaced by 64-bit, even though many, many 32-bit softwares are not changing over. In this mix, backward compatibility is built-in but I wonder at what cost.
More adventures are coming, stay tuned.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hola Arno from a cold Granada, Spain. Do I understand correctly that you can see SWF and FLV on your 64bit machine but can't download them? If so, you already did, they reside in your .mozilla cache hidden from view (ctrl+h) but accessible as long as you hold FireFox open!!! Upon closing it, they are wiped. You can recognize the swf and flv easily, they usually are quite large. Just rename them and move them to your Video folder or Desktop and you've got them. Now close Firefox and your cache is gone. Ready for a next load...
Best regards, John (nepmak2000)