[vox] Windows? FEH!

[Bill Kendrick]

So the project I'm currently working on at work is a game written in J2ME.
A coworker has been doing a lot of his development on Mac (which is Intel,
and he runs Parallels to use Windows XP when it's necessary).

Between that, and the fact that I now have ~12hrs of train commutting
per week (which would be fabulous for doing Tux Paint development), I finally
decided to install Kubuntu on my work laptop.

I made that decision Tuesday afternoon, and between work and life,
now on Thursday, I'm about 80% set up to get my work done without
booting into Windows! :)

Some things I needed, which I thought I'd share:

* 915resolution package in Kubuntu.  X defaulted to VESA drivers, which
  worked, but not well.  My laptop has a 1280x800 LCD screen, and at work
  I have a 1280x1024 monitor.  I only got as high as 1024x768 until
  installing this package and re-configuring X.  (Told it to use "i810"
  driver.)

* An external USB wireless adapater.  The built-in broadcom shows up as
  eth1, but never seems to connect.  For some wacky MAC-address-based
  licensing for an expensive ARM compiler, I was given the wireless USB
  doo-hickey.  I plugged it in and KDE noticed it, and let me get online!

* SourceOffSite client.  Kinda like CVS or SVN, but graphical.  And sucky.
  It's an off-site client to talk to Microsoft Visual Source Safe (VSS)
  servers.  (Which is even SUCKIER.)  It apparently has a command-line
  client, but the documentation is _useless_, so I'm sticking to the GUI.

* About 20MB of Java.  Not just for J2ME dev, but also for...

* ... Juniper Networks VPN client.  That's the VPN we have at work.
  I followed some "Juniper VPN on Ubuntu HOWTO" to convince it to work.
  (Niggling issues like "su" vs "sudo", "dlopen()" vs "ldd" which required
  one library so file be symlinked, and an amusing symlink from "/usr/bin/rpm"
  to "/bin/true" :^D )  [Note: I currently have to use Firefox, rather than
  my prefered browser, Konqueror.  I think simply because Konq's not set up
  for Java applets]

* VPN allowed me to talk to our Exchange server via IMAP, which I do with
  KMail.  Bam!  All of my mail folders available on Linux, without having
  to resort to the lame Outlook web-based interface.

* Java SDK stuff.  (Doesn't work; see below)

* Ant.  (What we use for building instead of Make; pretty standard in
  the J2ME world.)

* OpenOffice.org.  (For opening Design Docs, spreadsheets, etc.)


What doesn't work:

* Actual J2ME app compiling.  Still need to sit down and figure out what's
  missing.  Java is riddled with versions (5.0, 6.0) of products
  (SDK, JRE) that can get confusing.  And lots of stuff require specific
  _versions_ installed.  Then I have to set endless PATHs.  *sigh*

* MP3 playback in Amarok.  (I even installed MP3 Xine stuff...?)

* Built-in Wireless.  (Need to look into Broadcom support.  NDISwrapper?)

* maybe other stuff... I heard CPU stepping needs some patch?  *shrug*
  All I know is I can boot up _and_ log in _and_ start using apps in
  Kubuntu in approx. 60 seconds.  With Windows, it takes that long before
  the login prompt appears.  Then another _3 to 5 minutes_ before any apps
  actually respond when I click them.


FYI, this is a Dell Latitude D620.  Intel Core 2 Duo.

Just thought I'd share,

-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/