After installing Lubuntu on an old Dell, i was expecting a similar user experience from full Ubuntu with a Unity desktop environment, where I would need to spend many extra hours tweaking the install. Little did I know. Ubuntu is easier to install and use, by far.
My Lenovo w510 came with Windows 7, which I still want to keep. By adding another disk I could boot to the new Ubuntu disk, and then have a choice to stay in Ubuntu or boot to Windows. A dual boot install was required. There is a lot of help online about installing a dual boot using two disks.
Installation Errors: For the first 4-5 install attempts I kept getting “kernel panic” errors and did not know why. I would boot into Ubuntu, get the GRUB boot loader, select Ubuntu and get either a blank but purple background screen, or it would go black and display a “kernel panic” error. This was most disconcerting. The solution to this problem was that I had forgotten to format my USB key prior to loading it with Ubuntu 14.04. Pendrive Linux even has an option to format the USB key before loading. Once I did this the install went quickly and very smoothly, dropping me into the login screen.
For my dual boot I changed my computer BIOS to boot from my second disk, the one with the Ubuntu install,which is loaded with Grub, the Linux bootloader. Grub would then allow me the option of Ubuntu or Windows. Thus, I did not touch my Windows 7 install, which I think is much safer. It is also the default for an Ubuntu dual boot install. Grub was installed with the Windows option with no errors.
I am impressed by the one click Ubuntu install, which is much different from that of Lubuntu. Sure, both do their thing while installing, but the outcomes are very different.
| Task |
Lubuntu |
Ubuntu |
| Adding Chinese language and input |
Adding the language was easy but I had a problem and could not switch to Chinese from the keyboard. It turned out that iBus somehow lost my permission and would not let me runexecute it. I had to reinstall iBus. |
Adding Chinese was easy, adding a new input method was easy, and it works |
| Connect to Windows Network, adding printers |
Had to hack samba files as well as nsswitch.conf, a network file |
Look for a network, it showed up, added some passwords, and I was in |
| Adding wifi access |
Since I had a hidden network I had to drop my router’s hidden SSID and security, have Lubuntu connect, then raise my network security |
Add a hidden network, add the hidden SSID, security type and password, and it connected |
| Dual monitor |
Install ARandR, each time I power up I have to run ARandR. This is inconvenient |
Connect monitor to laptop and it extends the screen automatically |
| Adding the Menu for all Software |
Lubuntu does this by default |
Added Classic Menu Indicator. This indicator sits on the top bar and has dropdowns for all the software that comes loaded with Ubuntu |
Other Ubuntu 14.04 addons:
Adding bandwidth monitor: Added nethogs so that I can monitor my bandwidth usage. We’re having some issues with going over our bandwidth quota and I want to know how much I am using. The Windows machines use a great tool called NetWorkx, but there seems to not be a similar tool for Ubuntu. The command is sudo nethogs wlan0. The problem is that you need to start this thing every time you start up. It also does not keep your info from the session before, so it is only good for the “here and now” network monitoring. Monitoring is also dependent on your hardware network card, so if you change over from wireless to ethernet, you will need to restart your nethogs.
I tried downloading download-monitor but it seems to have been deleted. There is no ppa or link from software centre.
I am trying Network Traffic Monitor. It installs as an app. Though it has been tested for Ubuntu 09.10 it seems to work ok on Ubuntu 14.04. I would prefer a bandwidth monitor that remembers my history so I can compare for the next day, and this one might do it. It also has an auto disconnect feature that can be set by total bandwidth used, amount of time, etc. You can see reports as well.
My Lenovo W510 seems to freeze up every other day, for seemingly no reason. The last crash pointed to the video driver Nouveau. The supposed solution is to not allow graphics acceleration, but I’ve not found out how to do this. There is a bug report on this issue. (nouveau.noaccel=1 on kernel command line) by Greg Wilkins
My nouveau video driver has been freezing up my system, especially if I view pages with a lot of graphics. I’ve switched to the NVidea-331 proprietary driver, which is supposed to fix the problem.
Overall, Ubuntu seems to be much easier and more stable. Ihe install works very well out of the box, and without any technical surprises. Of course I am still working out small tweaks here and there, but I much prefer the Ubuntu install experience over Lubuntu.
Added: Classic Menu Indicator
Added: GIMP arrows, add script to the /home/username/.gimp-2.8/scripts directory
Addendum: command “df -h” will give you your disks and space used. To clean up the boot disk, use Synaptic and remove old versions of linux-headers and linux-image. That’ll drop your disk usage down to 25%
Addendum 2017-feb-27 Every once in a while the boot disk gets full. I go into Synaptic, search for linux-image and linux-header, and delete old copies.
