Well, I finally did it! Ubuntu related.

[Kreuger]

I love how I spent a while last night typing up a reply on my iPhone, only for it not to ever show up.

I'm not sure the "stable" version supports it. You'll likely have to compile the git code.

Edit: I had trouble getting my girlfriend's new model iPod to work but using this thread, I finally succeeded. It should also work for iPhones. Exact instructions in this post

[Panacik]

I think it's now completed importing my music. Although whenever I start it up it seems to be constantly scanning the drive despite my un-ticking "watch my folders..."

Now another niggle has arisen. Whenever I plug my iPhone in, the diologue box that used to pop up, asking it I want to open in Rythmbox, no longer does! And the iPhone doesn't show in RB.

Lol from one problem to another.

Still sticking to Ubuntu though :p

Lets see if you can beat my record of one month :p

I got EVERYTHING running on my home machine. I had dual screens working with a cool theme and even got wine working flawlessly with MS Office.

To be honest, it was just the fact that nothing i wanted to work, worked right out of the box. After finding that i had to fiddle with settings to get the smallest things working, i just got bored.

[chrisj1968]

Well I won't applaud your decision and say you did the "right" thing, it's your choice and you're the only one who can (and will be) the judge of that, but best of luck anyway, and if you need help, just say, I'm sure people will offer to assist in any way they can.

This is why Linux users in neowin here impress me alot and why I stay around

[tablet_user]

Congrats. Im actually the opposite though as of yesterday. Been using Gentoo for like 8 yrs dual boot and finally got rid of linux to be a complete windows 7 user.

[Panacik]

Have you tried Mint yet BTW? Its what i use on an old laptop at home.

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

@Panacik I may try Mint at another stage. Got to get this working first. ;)

@Krueger - thanks for those tips. Very helpful.

I managed to get iTunes installed on a virtual environment of (ironically) Windows 7, my iPhone pops up in there as a usb device. Unfortunately, iTunes keeps crashing when I try to start it. :( So, I'm back to square one atm.

But I am not going to let this beat me :D

[Growled Member]

There's no same in dual booting. I've been doing it for years.

[Rob2687]

If Rhythmbox is not seeing the iPhone anymore check if the Portable Players - iPod plugin is still enabled under Edit>Plugins.

Lucid has pretty up to date iPhone support. This allows for reading music from it in apps like Rhythmbox. Writing to the iPhone libraries is another story. I haven't been able to create or modify playlists on it. Sometimes when I add music to it in iTunes on Windows it decides it's corrupt and restores the device.

I dual boot for certain things like this. I have not yet dared to try iTunes on Wine. :pinch:

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

@Rob2687 already ticked in Rythmbox and it is not seeing it.

I'm starting to get miffed now. :angry:

I also found out that most of the programmes that claim to support web cams do, but that the frame rate is slow or the picture is grainy or saturated, even after altering slide controls. I may as well walk to my friends house and talk to them there.

I really want to get this working, I really do, but I can see why Linux is still not mainstream.

I have tested Ubuntu for weeks now and on Sunday did a full clean install. For me to get this completely sorted has ages, and still there are niggles that just don't work properly.

I've been using computers since my Son was 4. He's now 18 and it's getting to me!!! God only knows what it would be like for novice computer users.

In Windows, everything is literally plug and play and that's it! Web cams work. iPhones work. Music players work. Everything just works.

I can't get iTunes to work in Virtualbox. I can't get my web cam to work through there either, and I need both of those to work efficiently.

I am so close to going back to a full Windows environment, I really am. :(

[AJerman]

Really? I'm finding the opposite, but I guess we could just be doing different things. I'm still very happy with Ubuntu, and have found that I haven't booted back to OS X on my Macbook since I first installed Ubuntu. Everything works pretty smooth for me. Being that I work in computers, I'm not much of a fan of having to screw with mine to get it to work anymore, and Ubuntu really hasn't made me do that too much. Most of what I find myself doing that's more complex, is done by my desire, and not by necessity. I do have some bugs that are weird and some obnoxious, but all in all I've been impressed.

Now, I haven't tried to use my camera or sync my iPhone to Ubuntu, so the two things that seem to be bothering you, I haven't messed with.

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

Yes those 2 things are bothering me. My music is important [iPhone] and the web cam is too.

I do have Ubuntu set up very much how I like it. Nicely themed. Nicely set out. Good balance of speed and things, but, It's those 2 things that are causing me real issues and I'm slowly losing patience with Ubuntu, which is a shame.

[Rob2687]

Does the iPhone still get mounted? In Nautilus it should show up as a removable drive. You can also check if it's detected on the USB port by running lsusb in a terminal. It will show up as Apple Mobile Device or something.

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

I gave up. It was just ****ing me off too much. I have re-installed Windows 7 and within 2hrs 40mins I had every programme, piece of hardware, and bits & bobs that I wanted sorted and working.

I am actually kinda sad about the fact that even with a distro like Ubuntu, it still isn't quite there for the mass market. It's just too frustrating at times. Who wants to do command line stuff? Who wants to be fiddling about with software that just doesn't do what it claims to do?

I gave it several weeks, but in the end I lost my patience.

Ubuntu is close, but just not close enough...not quite yet.

I'll try again another time in th future....maybe.

[Syanide]

Well. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. One thing though, you do actually realize you've been using a beta/RC quality product? My suggestion would be to let a month pass, because there will be a surge in bug filings in the days after the release, and about a month in, most big ones will be squashed. That's what I did with Karmic, and I never had any problems with it, whilst a lot of people complained it was buggy. If you feel like it, of course. Maybe it's just that Windows is better for you.

[spartyjohnson]

My Ubuntu experience hasn't been all that great either. I am able to solve issues that come along as I am pretty familiar with Linux. The big thing I am looking for is a very polished look. When I install Windows 7 I automatically get transparency and a beautiful look. With Ubuntu I get some horrible grey theme with window buttons on the left. I got so frustrated because my eyes keep looking for the buttons on the right. I am aware that this can be changed and Linux is very customizable, but I really want a good starting point and Ubuntu isn't quite yet there.

I am going to keep chugging along as I want to see if I can achieve the look that I want in Ubuntu. Currently I am using the Cairo Dock, but I haven't yet found where to start to get transparency and 'glass-like' effects with my window borders. Also a very large percentage of the publicly available themes are horrible and it is hard to find something that fits my taste. I enjoy the GNU forums here to see what others are using and how they got the same look, but sometimes I would need to change my WM to get that look and that just irks me.

I would say that usually competition is a good thing, but it really seems to be hindering Linux development here. The big players are focusing on Server products and Desktop is left to fend for itself. My opinion would be to combine all players into 1 WM and make it as good (and probably better than) as Windows.

[Syanide]

I am going to keep chugging along as I want to see if I can achieve the look that I want in Ubuntu. Currently I am using the Cairo Dock, but I haven't yet found where to start to get transparency and 'glass-like' effects with my window borders. Also a very large percentage of the publicly available themes are horrible and it is hard to find something that fits my taste. I enjoy the GNU forums here to see what others are using and how they got the same look, but sometimes I would need to change my WM to get that look and that just irks me.

You can basically carbon copy Windows' style of transparent/blurred window borders using Emerald to draw window borders and Compiz. Or the entire Windows UI. If you're up to it you can even go a step further and try the experimental transparent GTK widget addon. I've tried it on my Karmic install before I upgraded to Lucid.

[AJerman]

Yeah, I've noticed a few bugs here and there that I'm hoping are fixed in the coming days for the final release, or soon after that, but for the most part I'm pretty good.

As for the look and feel, I've don't know anything about Cairo Dock since I haven't used it, but I am using Docky (from PPA), and am pretty pleased with that (after I fixed a crashing Network Connections plugin). As far as the rest of the theme goes, I REALLY like the Bisigi themes that I found mentioned on Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.co...ye+opening-ways They aren't glass, but several of them have transparency (see my screenshot below, title bar of inactive windows). There are several themes included and I strongly suggest looking through them, some are really nice.

I'm currently using the Bamboo-zen theme, and I think it looks great. There are a few other themes in the package that I like that I'll probably flip through over time. I'd suggest trying it out. The cool thing is that they have a PPA set up for the themes, so they can update theme over time and you can automatically pull the updates when you update your system.

The next thing I'm working on is getting Conky set up and using a theme I like, however, my background right now is too busy for Conky, so I may have to tweak it a little more to look good, haha.

Here's what I'm looking like right now, it's not much, but it's my start (oh, and Docky is set to auto hide, I just popped it up for the screenshot. Also, Chrome has it's own style, so I don't have a normal themed active window, but I didn't want to open a ton of windows for the screenshot):

[markwolfe Veteran]

...

I would say that usually competition is a good thing, but it really seems to be hindering Linux development here.

:blink: Funny, but Linux has come further in the 19 or so years it has even existed than Microsoft or Apple have gone with their OSes.

Linux is the late horse. The other horses were running many years before Linux was even a kernel that could compile itself. Seems to me that the development model is speedier, but just hasn't quite gotten to the point of Win 7 or OSX for most people yet on the desktop. As you pointed out, overall, Linux has done extremely well (server, embedded/mobile, supercomputing).

[Growled Member]

Ubuntu is close, but just not close enough...not quite yet.

I'll try again another time in th future....maybe.

No wanting to be a downer but I doubt much if things like iPhones will ever work in Linux. I believe Apple doesn't want it to work in Linux, so they'll keep changing things so it won't work.

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

I may have to dual boot then ;)

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

Put Ubuntu back on this morning using wubi [ubuntu 10.4]. lol Now dual booting. At least if and when I need iTunes I can boot into Windows. ;)

One last question.

When I boot up, I get a boot menu offering me Windows [default] and Ubuntu. When I select Ubtunu I then get another menu [grub?] offering me Ubuntu default, Ubuntu safe and Windows 7. I'm assuming the 1st menu is the default Windows one. Or am I mistaken?

How do I get the 1st menu to default select Ubuntu to boot into?

And I'd just like to say thank you to all Neowinians who have helped me over the last few days getting my various problems sorted. (Y)

Bugger! :blush: I went into Windows, set the 1st menu to Ubuntu default, @ 0 seconds, the Ubuntu [grub] menu now appears instantly, but, if I select Windows 7, on the grub menu, of course it goes to the 1st menu again, which in turn goes straight back to the Ubuntu grub menu and so on.

I tried F8 and esc but to no avail.

I really should stop fiddling lol

Anyone know how to possibly change the 1st menu again? :whistle:

Edited April 28, 2010 by artnada

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

Boot off dvd

Select language

Select repair

Select cmd

type in

bcdedit /timeout 5

Done thanks to another forum. I'm leaving it alone now :D

[spartyjohnson]

I will have to play more when I get some time. Right now I am dual-booting on my Laptop at home. We are .NET shop and so I have to run Windows at work. I will have to look into Docky and see if I like it better. I will also look more into the themes and the link you posted. How does one install new themes in Ubuntu 10.04 RC?

Yeah, I've noticed a few bugs here and there that I'm hoping are fixed in the coming days for the final release, or soon after that, but for the most part I'm pretty good.

As for the look and feel, I've don't know anything about Cairo Dock since I haven't used it, but I am using Docky (from PPA), and am pretty pleased with that (after I fixed a crashing Network Connections plugin). As far as the rest of the theme goes, I REALLY like the Bisigi themes that I found mentioned on Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.co...ye+opening-ways They aren't glass, but several of them have transparency (see my screenshot below, title bar of inactive windows). There are several themes included and I strongly suggest looking through them, some are really nice.

I'm currently using the Bamboo-zen theme, and I think it looks great. There are a few other themes in the package that I like that I'll probably flip through over time. I'd suggest trying it out. The cool thing is that they have a PPA set up for the themes, so they can update theme over time and you can automatically pull the updates when you update your system.

The next thing I'm working on is getting Conky set up and using a theme I like, however, my background right now is too busy for Conky, so I may have to tweak it a little more to look good, haha.

Here's what I'm looking like right now, it's not much, but it's my start (oh, and Docky is set to auto hide, I just popped it up for the screenshot. Also, Chrome has it's own style, so I don't have a normal themed active window, but I didn't want to open a ton of windows for the screenshot):

[Pikey]

Why not try out a different distro?

There are plenty out there to experiment with if Ubuntu Isn't doing it for you .. I'm patiently waiting for the next OpenGEU myself ..

[AJerman]

I will have to play more when I get some time. Right now I am dual-booting on my Laptop at home. We are .NET shop and so I have to run Windows at work. I will have to look into Docky and see if I like it better. I will also look more into the themes and the link you posted. How does one install new themes in Ubuntu 10.04 RC?

Honestly, I don't even know how you'd install a theme if you just downloaded it in an archive, never tried, but these are in a repository and can be installed with aptitude since you're using Ubuntu, just do the following commands in terminal (copied from their site):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bisigi && sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install bisigi-themes