reinvention

I got an upgraded work computer today, with an amd64, a gig of ram, 80G SATA drive, and a radeon 7000 graphics card — it is this last bit that gave me lots of problems today.

I first installed Ubuntu (Hoary Hedgehog), my favourite system these days. All seemed well until X started crashing unpredictably. Googled on the problem and found that others with similar system configurations has same symptoms.

Tried using the vesa driver instead of the ati driver and that was better, except that I was stuck at one resolution (1280×1024).

Tried other OSs/distros. First, tried FreeBSD 5.4 (latest release) and that seemed to work fine. Decided not to stick with FreeBSD to be consistent with the other developers at work (who used Linux). Tried Gentoo and that seemed ok; had problems setting it up (of course) but when I finally had things going, one of my colleagues at work gave me Fedora Core 4, my all-time favourite (sort of, as I’m aRed Hat fan). Installed that — had to go pick up the kids and all by 4:45 but went back to the office by 6:0 to continue. Similar problem as Ubuntu!

Swapped the video card from the old Duron I was using — it had what might be a better card, a Rage 128 AGP card. The Radeon in the amd64 box was PCI.

Anyway, reinstalled Ubuntu as I was having problems modufying xorg to work with Fedora with the card change. Testing that set up now and it seems to be stable.

Running for 1:09 as at 20:17, and no crashes yet. Looks ok.

I installed Ubuntu Linux 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) on one of the machines (desktop) I use at work, replacing the Gentoo Linux that was on it. I was using the Gentoo lately and was getting impatient with emerges. I had tried Ubuntu at the previous workplace and was impressed with it so I decided to do away with Gentoo. No regrets. I like apt-get, having used it for a while on the Red Hat/Fedora systems I;ve been using these past years. apt-get does not disappoint on this Ubuntu box. Its an old Duron (with a 750Mhz cpu) but it doesn’t feel slouchy with Ubuntu. Well, it wasn’t slouchy either with Gentoo but I was tiring of waiting for emerge.

I’ll be working elsewhere by Tuesday, 7th June. I’ll be working for Felino again, as his offsider/assistant developer for Multibet (http://www.multibet.com). Not much I can say about the work (very confidential stuff), except that its “real geek stuff,” according to Felino. Loking forward to working there, as I’m sure I’ll pick up more knowledge and skills with Felino and others. I know most of the people who work there too, and they’re nice people. So, another try at geekhood (at a happier place, however).