Mistakes

Oh, yes, mistakes.

And so soon after the last post.

Because it's related.

You see, once I had my pure Ubuntu system, I made a mistake. I wanted the two new partitions, one that was previously C:\ and the other D:\ (D:\ being a separate partition on the same drive as Ubuntu and it's swap space) to automagically mount on boot.

However... be wary of messing in something you don't know about, because as a result of trying using tools, and some help in the Ubuntu IRC community support channel - a very helpful place, I might add - Ubuntu now refuses to boot.

So, I'm forced to dig out the Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope LiveCD which has been gathering dust, use it to make a quick emergency backup of the data on Ubuntu to my laptop, and now it's happily churning away.

At what? Firstly, it's changing the ex-C:\ drive into the /home partition. All home folders are on this drive, separately now. Secondly, it's changing the ex-D:\ drive's windows partition, and the now dead Jaunty that was already on there, into one large partition, mounted as / (Root filesystem, for those who don't have a clue).

And then finally, it's going to install Jaunty, and I get the thankless (at least here, anyway) task of reinstalling all sorts of things.

Hey, at least it's quicker than installing Windows, that sometimes feels like it takes years.

The Switch

I've been a Ubuntu user for some time now, but I still periodically needed to reboot into Windows, and the rest of the family here also preferred Windows too.

Now that's changed. Windows XP, which had been failing slowly for a while, finally made everyone lose patience with it when all sound production ceased, with no apparent cause or remedy short of a format, and thus a plan was born.

Now, I've just finished setting up that same computer, with only Ubuntu on it. Windows XP still exists, but only on a mere technicality. For Windows programs, Wine takes over, but even Wine has problems sometimes, so the VirtualBox OSE (Open Source Edition) has been installed from the Ubuntu-tweak's 3rd party repositories, and if the need arises, the Virtual XP can take over from Wine.

There's still one computer in the house that proper dual-boots XP over Ubuntu, but more than just the family use it, so it makes more sense to leave it - for now.

But for the main computer, the days of XP have ended, and the Virtual one's days are numbered, as Wine because more and more apt at running the programs.

(Oh, and yes, I did kind of write this like a story. It wasn't actually intentional.)

Chromium/Google Chrome

Okay, I'm now almost completely switched to Chromium (Or Google Chrome, since a lot of what I say about Chromium applies to Google Chrome too)

As previously mentioned, I've enabled Flash support.

Now, I have an adblocker too.

I'm converted.

I'm still missing something to check hotmail/yahoo emails, I know there's one for the gmail, but I'm keeping things lightweight, and it really isn't too much trouble to log in periodically. Like once a day.

NoScript WOULD be nice, but for sites I'm used to, it's not essential.

Anyway, the goodies you've been waiting for. I'm too lazy to tell you how to do it yourself, so here's a link to your Chromium or Google Chrome adblocker: CLICKY

Enjoy.

Random Silliness

I've been on Gaia Online too much lately. It's a far better place to be addicted to than Facebook.

And yes, I AM an addict of Gaia Online. I even joined the guild for it.

I've finished the event, Camp Chaos, in record time for any event I've taken part in (not many, actually).

Now I've been spontaneously pranking random people, except most of them are in a battle already, which gives a General Error.

And I couldn't help but think of a military General, named Error.

Then I remembered something from Zelda II, where in one place, you meet someone named Error. He's Error. General Error.

Okay, silliness over. For now.

Browsers again

Yeah, I know. I need to post more regularly. I've never been one for regular routines though.

Anyway, browsers again. One new one, one old face, SwiftFox, and Chromium.

SwiftFox is similar to SwiftWeasel mentioned before, except it seems to be more up to date, and do a better job. However, like any mozilla-based browser, it suffers from excessive memory and processor use.

Chromium I said before due to it's lack of Flash support, I didn't use much. I've since solved that, and also found a way to get one of my favourite FireFox extensions work too - StumbleUpon.

Firstly, StumbleUpon. I'm not going to hide where I found out, so here's the page it's on.

Useful, neh?

Now for Flash. It turns out, there's a really simple way to do this.

If you'd rather get it from the same place I did, click here.

If not, and you're running a debian, ubuntu, or a box based on either of them, then read on.

1: Download the .tar.gz flash 10 from Adobe

2: Extract the file inside, and make sure you know how to reach where it is in a terminal.

3: Enter this command:

sudo cp ~/Downloads/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins

(Replace ~/Downloads/ with the path to the extracted file.

4: run Chromium with the command:

chromium-browser --enable-plugins

If you use a menu item or desktop launcher or any kind of launcher, just edit the command that uses.

Simples.

A caveat, however. Since enabling Flash in Chromium, it's become slightly less stable, and there's the added inconvenience of flash Ads, but that's all.