Before christmas, I ordered an intel-based Asus PC with Ubuntu
pre-installed from efficientpc.co.uk. I upped the ram to 2G and got a
mid-rage dual-core processor.
I didn't get chance to do anything with this until after christmas, when
I went to the local pcworld and bought a 22" monitor and the local currys
where I bought a 19" monitor/dvb/tv, inexpensive keyboard and mouse.
I plugged it all together, fortunately, the monitor came with both VGA
and DVI leads, so I could connect both monitors.
I switched on the PC, and, well, it booted. I logged in with the default
password, and, err, it worked. It's an ultra-quiet version, there's a
quick burst of fan-noise at switch on, then it becomes essentially
silent.
I had a bit of a problem trying to get to grips with how the dual-monitor
stuff worked, but once I'd found out about the xrandr programme, I
was able to set the screen size on both monitors, and position the TV
"underneath" the monitor. You can position it anywhere, *but*, if you
make the virtual screen size > 2048 x 2048 in any direction, then the
compositing extension will be switched off.
I went into the compiz settings, in the gnome system->preferences menu,
and turned on most of the flashy controls. As a 35-year cli junky,
I expected to be artistically impressed by the bells & whistles,
and then to switch it off, *but*, I have to say that the transparent,
slow-rotating cube (you can set the speed and opacity) genuinely helps
in day to day computing. Also, the zoom-in option ("super" key and
mouse-wheel) is really useful, too. The flat film-strip option is quite
good, although I prefer the cube.
I was so impressed by the whizzy bits that I did two of the debian desktop
machines over the weekend, and Mrs Mark and kids were all very impressed.
No1 son was slightly disappointed that his new Leopard upgrade doesn't
seem quite so sexy now.
Further checking the capabilities of this very impressive inexpensive
machine, I installed several 3D games, including Quake3 plus reaction
and other mods, Nexuiz, Tremulous and so on, and found that, in spite of
the apparently low-capability 3D card, they were all very playable.
Handy, as both lads had friends visiting over the weekend, so there were
lots of lan games being played.
Anyway, to sum up all the grief of getting your Ubuntu pre-installed, it
kind of goes like this:
1. Spec and order PC
2. Obtain mouse, keyboard & monitor
3. Plug it all together
4. Use it.
Mrs Mark was *so* impressed that she persuaded me to order another
machien from efficientpc, so this one is rather higher-specced, being
intended as a predominantly gaming and general purpose machine, whereas
this machine is my new office machine which can double as an extra
player when we have a lot of visitors for lan games.
It would be useful to see a GUI front-end for xrandr; indeed, being able
to change pretty much everything on-the-fly using xrandr is fantastic.
Of course, most people won't be using dual-monitors anyway.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
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