Blog-Birthday Five

One more year of, slow but steady, blogging has passed. Let me just say thanks to all my readers and visitors.

Upgraded to Ubuntu 13.10 “Saucy Salamander”

This is just a short post to report about the upgrade of my two computers to the latest Ubuntu release. I upgraded just after the distribution release (Saturday 19) but various problems kept me from writing about it.

Test Drive: Ubuntu-Gnome 13.10 “Saucy Salamander” (Beta 2) on the EEEPC

After testing the latest Ubuntu release I proceeded my test session with Ubuntu-gnome edition. Ubuntu-gnome is the distribution I have installed on the (actually) oldest computer I have, the EEEPC 900. Trying a distribution without installing becomes so the “go/no-go” condition for when the official upgrade will be released. Even if Linux distributions are generally benevolent with older hardware you'll never be sure if and how your system will work without testing.

First impressions

As usual, I prepared a bootable USB disk with the Ubuntu's tool and a booted my EEEPC from it.

Ubuntu-gnome is provided with Gnome-Shell 3.8. The interface is quite similar with the version shipped with previous Ubuntu release.

Test drive : Ubuntu 13.10 “Saucy Salamander” (Nightly Build)

The upgrade season is coming again. As I do twice a year I downloaded from Ubuntu download page the currently available version (not called beta anymore) of the October Ubuntu release. I prepared my USB disk in order to test the incoming release live on my computers.

On the EEEPC 900

After booting from the USB disk everything proceeded regularly until I arrived to the “Try or Install” screen. The top panel appears oddly expanded down to almost half screen.

Troubles trying to install Deepin Desktop Environment

I have been positively impressed after my latest test of Deepin Linux, especially of its desktop environment (Deepin DE). I so decided to try to install, separately, Deepin DE on my desktop computer.

The beginning

Instructions I found around the 'net, here, there and other similar pages, are roughly all the same: add Deepin sources to “/etc/apt/sources.list” file

deb http://packages.linuxdeepin.com/deepin raring main non-free universe
deb-src http://packages.linuxdeepin.com/deepin raring main non-free universe

Then I imported GPG key for such sources

wget http://packages.linuxdeepin.com/deepin/project/deepin-keyring.gpg
gpg --import deepin-keyring.gpg
sudo gpg --export --armor 209088E7 | sudo apt-key add -

at last I launched the apt-get command as usual

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install dde-meta-core.

Things start going wrong …

Just after the installation process ended nothing happened, I logged out but I didn't find the option to log back with Deepin desktop. I continued working and, after some time, I got a incomplete update error message from Ubuntu update software. The error message suggested to “Upgrade” the distribution. At this point the system was completely wrecked: I rebooted and I got a system who identified itself, using the lsb_release command, as “Deepin Linux”. Unity was barely working while Gnome shell didn't start at all. Looking on the 'net I then discovered Deepin desktop uses its own patched versions of fundamental software like Compiz so installing it on an existing system is definitively a risky business.