I tweeted today about this being my second full day on Ubuntu and it a bunch of responses from people wanting to know how I did this or that, what my experience was, etc. So here’s the story.
For a while, I’ve been wanting to set up a home server. For backups, file storage, and to learn a bit more about server administration and server side programming. It’s a big gap in my knowledge base. I also wanted to get back into Linux. I’d fist messed around with Linux back in the mid 90’s, downloading RedHat onto something like 18 floppy disks via a 14.4 modem in order to install it. Back in the good old days when you had to install your own window manager and configure it by editing config files. I know you can still do that, but back then it was the only way to do it. Finally, I wanted to get back into hardware. From my very first PC (after graduating from a Commodore 128 and Amiga 500) up until my first laptop, I had built all my own PCs from scratch. I’d start with some cheap or free used PC and upgrade it bit by bit until it was a nice machine. It would often wind up with some friend or family member and I’d start over.
The Linux portion of this whole thing got rekindled recently, in my switch over from MediaTemple to Dreamhost. I was messing with DNS settings and MX records and SSHing into both servers and running SQL queries to back up and restore this blog’s database, since it was too big to handle by the WordPress export/import system. I amazed myself with what I accomplished and learned in that whole process, and wanted to dive into it more.
So at some point a few weeks ago, I pulled up an old box I had rusting in the basement and tried to boot it up. Apparently it had rusted a bit too long and either the CPU or something on the board was fried. I went onto Amazon and bought a motherboard and cpu, along with some RAM, a 2 TB hard drive, and a DVD player/recorder. I had a bunch of unused gift certificate money on account, so it technically didn’t cost me a dime, but came to about $300 something total. The components trickled in and I sadly realized that I was the owner of a micro ATX case, and a full ATX motherboard. So back to Amazon for a nice case.
The case arrived and I realized that my power supply had only the IDE type connectors, no SATA connectors, which I needed for my drives. I picked up a new power supply locally and I was in business. Since then, I added a new fan, a fan control unit, and a memory card reader. Here’s the building in progress:
The empty case with power supply:
The motherboard installed:
And the CPU and fan:
All the front panel stuff wired up:
Everything in place:
Wide shot:
Cover on:
And a front view:
I had a real blast building this, shopping around for parts, learning about different boards and chips, formats and standards. Stuff that I’d forgotten a lot about. For those who are interested, the specs are:
MB: Intel Media Series ATX Motherboard BOXDH55HC
CPU: Intel Core i3 Processor i3-540 3.06GHz 4MB LGA1156 CPU BX80616I3540
RAM: Corsair 4GB Dual Channel Corsair DDR3 Memory for Intel Core i5 Processors (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9)
HD: Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS
Case: Cooler Master RC-310-BWN1-GP Elite 310 ATX, MATX Mid Tower Case with Window (Black/Blue)
Fan Controller: Scythe “KAZE MASTER ACE ” 5.25″ Bay Fan Controller- Black (KM02-BK)
Not a top of the line system, but decent enough, with lots of room to grow.
Software
Now that I had a box up and running, time to install some stuff. I went with Ubuntu 10.10. Installed VirtualBox and pulled out my old Windows install disks and set that up with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 7. The first two, mostly just because I could, and because I have 2TB of disk space to play with. Actually 3TB, because I salvaged another 1TB drive out of another device I wasn’t using.
I opened up ports for VNC, SSH, and HTTP, and set it up with www.dyndns.com so now I can access the machine from anywhere and do just about anything with it. Really having a blast exploring all the options.
Back to Ubuntu
All right, this is what I started to write about in the first place. I really enjoyed using Ubuntu on my server. I sat up in the living room SSHed or VNCed into the server, exploring stuff, installing new programs, finding out what I could do. It was great, but VNC is VNC. I set up VirtualBox on my PC and ran it from there as well. After a couple of weeks of doing both, I decided to make the jump to a full dual boot Ubuntu system. That’s what I did over this past weekend. It went very smoothly. I now had a dual boot system that defaults to Ubuntu, but also has Windows 7 as an option.
My next goal was to see if I could use Ubuntu full time as my main OS. For playing around, it was just fine, but if I was going to use it day in and day out, I needed to have a bunch of stable, viable, usable applications for doing all my day-to-day stuff. What amazed me was just how many of the apps I use on a regular basis have Linux versions. I don’t mean similar apps that do the same basic thing, but actual Linux versions of the exact same programs.
For example, I use Launchy as a task launcher, RapidSVN as an SVN UI, Tweetdeck for twitter, KeepassX for passwords, Skype for … Skype. all of these have Linux versions that I was able to install right off the bat. Made me feel quite at home and comfortable.
I’ve been making heavy use of Google Apps, having switched over my BIT-101.com email to Google apps. So mail, calendar, RSS, and documents were a no brainer and completely seamless. Chrome works fine on Ubuntu, too. With all that down, I felt I was almost able to make the switch. The big thing was going to be Flash/Flex/AIR development.
Obviously, CS5 does not exist on Linux yet. Nor does Flash Builder. But the Flex SDK and MXMLC works just fine there. You just need something to write your code in. There were two main choices – FDT and IntelliJ Idea. Both of which I happened to have licenses for. While IntelliJ is pretty awesome, it’s so different from Flash Builder, which I am used to, that I found it hard to really get comfortable with. FDT is Eclipse-based, like Flash Builder. The devil you know… as the old saying starts. So I decided to go with FDT.
Getting it set up was fairly easy, and I was hello worlding before I knew it. But the project I’m in the middle of presented a much bigger challenge – not a straight AS3 web project, but a Flex based, full screen AIR application that will be deployed on a kiosk. If I could get this going with FDT on Linux, I was home free. Some serious problems lay ahead. One was that I needed a debug player for 64 bit Linux. I dug one of those up somewhere – maybe labs? Then I was having problems with my embeds. Something is handled different on Windows and Linux with paths. I finally figured out I just needed to add a “../” in front of the embedded asset path. Not sure why it’s different. But that path works in both Windows and Linux, so it’s probably the “right” way. Next up was run/debug configurations. In FDT, if you are editing any class and you do a run or debug, it will create a run/debug configuration with that class as the main application. This is very different than Flash Builder, where you set the main application class and it will always use that. I finally worked through a couple of tutorials on the FDT site that straightened me out. Basically, you need to create your own configuration, and then, in preferences set Eclipse to always use the last configuration if one is unspecified. Handled.
The final problem was with AIR. All kinds of weird errors going on there. But no AIR file launching. After much searching, I finally realized that AIR SDK that you get when you download a Flex SDK is only good for Mac and PC. You have to go here and download the AIR SDK for Linux. I’m not sure how you are supposed to integrate the two of these things, but what I did was to go into the bin folder of my flex sdk folder, and remove adl, adl.exe, adt, and adt.bat, and replace them with the adl and adt files from the linux sdk. This is probably a very half-assed solution, but it actually worked. If anyone has any more robust directions, let me know, but with all of the above, I am now compiling and debugging my app without a hitch. I’ve also got MinimalComps compiling its swc using FDT, and the next release will be produced that way.
As for the time line on all this, I started trying to compile the app on Monday morning, but ran into all the problems mentioned above, so had to retreat back to Windows so I could get some work done for the day. I went home Monday night and worked through all the solutions I just mentioned. Tuesday I went to work and booted up Linux and haven’t looked back. That’s two full, very productive work days on Ubuntu alone, building a Flex based AIR app. I’d call that a success. I’ll definitely be finishing out the week on Ubuntu and heading into the sunset with it. 🙂
A bunch of people on twitter asked me about Flash, Photoshop, and the Creative Suite in general. The answer is that I don’t use Flash CS5 all that much. Well, actually I do use it fairly often, but not for long periods. I’ll fire it up to test out some snippet of code or spike out some idea. it’s great for that. But once the idea moves into something serious, it always gets moved into a more serious development environment. I will kind of miss that. Currently I’m looking into wonderfl.net to fill that gap. I’m not saying this is a solution for everyone. If you do a lot of timeline or library stuff, you really need Flash. For me, I just need a way to fire up something and lay down some fast code and see what it does without creating a workspace, package, classes, etc. wonderfl may serve that purpose in many cases.
As for graphics stuff, I haven’t run into a need for that yet in the last few days. Fireworks has been my weapon of choice for several years. I’m not sure what my solution will be for that yet. Naturally, when you think “Linux” and “graphics”, you think “Gimp”. It’s been years since I touched that, but I imagine when the need arises, I’ll look at it again, and then look around to see what else is out there too.
There’s also the possibility of running Windows on VirtualBox and installing CS5 in there. I think VirtualBox is great for some stuff, but large, resource heavy programs like Flash and Photoshop… the idea of those running in a VM scares me. I’ve tried running Visual Studio 2010 for Windows Phone stuff there, and it’s pretty slow. Also the Windows Phone emulator refuses to work in VirtualBox. An emulator in a virtual machine… go figure. Then there’s Wine, which may be able to run Some CS programs. I can’t speak for how successful that might be. My bottom line thought is that if you are REALLY dependent on Creative Suite programs and use them heavily day to day, Ubuntu is not the OS for you. You’re just setting yourself up for frustration.
On the PC I’ve been using Putty for SSH and TightVNC for VNC. Ubuntu has SSH and VNC capabilities built in, so that was easy. For IM, I’m using the built in Empathy client, which seems to handle my multitude of IM accounts perfectly well. Finally, you can’t work without some sounds of one kind of another emerging from your computer and into your ear holes. I go back and forth between podcasts and music. Ubuntu has RhythmBox preinstalled. It’s OK, but I’ve been checking out others. I’m pretty happy with Banshee at the moment, but will probably keep exploring.
After just two days, I’m already looking at editing my partitions to give Ubuntu some more room, and moving more of my files over to the Linux side. I need to keep the dual boot setup at least for my Windows Phone development, as I have one project half done, and will probably do some more stuff with that. And it’s just not happening virtually.
At any rate, as I also mentioned on twitter, if you are a professional developer, you really need to have access to a Windows box and a Mac, one way or the other, virtual or physical. I think any professional developer who bitches about this or that operating system or platform or language or device and sticks to one single platform, refusing to touch anything else is childish and unprofessional. At the very least, it’s a pretty poor long term career attitude. Learn more. Experiment. Try something new. You’ll be a better person for it. It’s fine to be an expert in a specific area, but don’t paint yourself into a coffin. (you like that one?) In addition to my home server and my dual boot laptop, I have a Mac book at home and a Mac book pro at work, both plugged in and ready to go. I have three fully charged phones within arms reach – my iPhone, Nexus One, and Samsung Focus (WP7). I don’t like to get too comfortable with any one thing. I feel like I’m stagnating. I used my Windows Phone for the last 3 months. Now i’m carrying the iPhone again, just for a change. What makes you more valuable – the fact that you can make a good snide remark about how much platform X sucks as compared to the platform you use? Or the fact that you can sit down and be comfortable and productive in any platform? Which makes you feel more confident?
Sorry. Got a little preachy there. Just get tired of hearing about technology wars when there is so much awesome and exciting stuff to learn and play with. Now more than ever. End of rant. Try Ubuntu. You might like it.
Really sad that Adobe have stopped the Flash builder development for linux… Had the beta versions of that all running and was looking forward to a final release…
Apparently there’s no money in linux 🙁
“Something is handled different on Windows and Linux with paths. I finally figured out I just needed to add a “../” in front of the embedded asset path. Not sure why it’s different.”
I could be wrong, but I don’t think this is a Windows/Linux thing. I think it has to do with how the files get compiled… In Flex builder, the embed paths are relative to the root of the project, but everywhere else, they’re relative to the actual class file that has the embed in it.
ah, that would make sense. Thanks.
Oh, and I agree 100% about the multiple platforms thing. I’ve been running Win 7 + OSX side by side with Synergy, and it’s been awesome. There are some things Win 7 is great at, and some things OSX is great at.
I should also point out that you don’t really need Launchy in Win 7, you can just press the Windows key and then type in what you need, it’s like Launchy or Quicksilver, but built right into the OS.
synergy does rock. I’ve used that often over the years.
I know you don’t need Launchy on Win7, but it has a few features I liked over the built in search.
Yeah I figured you knew, I guess I just never use those extra features. The Win 7 one even searches your emails, if you use outlook, which is pretty sweet too.
I guess that’s what i like about launchy, that you can set exactly what it will index. I use that just for programs. and it seems to have some intelligence in selecting what you use most often. so it seems speedier for straight common program launching. I use the windows search for more advanced stuff.
Been using ubuntu for more than a month now, switched from osx.
I have osx and win 7 in virtual machines just incase but i barely use them.
Bluefish is an awesome coda equivellent – mount sftp and your all good to edit sites live.
and build gimp from the ppa(https://launchpad.net/~matthaeus123/+archive/mrw-gimp-svn/+packages) and enable single window mode – its awesome, much more usable.
Thanks. I’ll check those out.
Nice looking system 🙂 I’ve been using Ubuntu at work for a few years now, a couple of those doing Flex dev. There were a few of headaches setting up the dev tool chain, as you’ve found. The one that bugged me the most was how slow mxmlc is. I tried using the ‘Flash compiler shell tools’ to speedup the process, but that would always blow its stack after a while which got annoying. Does FDT optimize the build process at all? Perhaps with the faster hardware this isn’t as noticable. Eventually I switched to haXe for much faster compilation, and lately have been doing Javascript, which requires no compilation at all (except refreshing the browser of course).
ps. I like Gnome-DO as a launcher on Ubuntu. Much like quicksilver/alfred on mac.
I’m not sure what FDT does. You just point it at your sdk folder and ti handles things from there. It seems about on par with Flash Builder. Haven’t done any serious measuring. I’ll check out Gnome-DO. I love software recommendations. 🙂
FDT uses the Flex SDK API to create our own build process and it’s much faster than Flash Builder’s. This is because we don’t use fcsh and have our own incremental build scheme.
We’re working on haXe more and more and want to provide a great editor for anyone who uses it. It’s a fun language and the compiler is wicked fast.
Keith, and all Linux users, please take FDT for a spin and let us know about any issues you encounter. We have a Linux QA process and a few Linux developers we work closely with for quality control; however, it’s much, much smaller than our OSX and Windows user base.
If any Linux users have bugs or feature requests, please let us know:
http://bugs.powerflasher.com/jira/browse/FDT
Alan, it’s working pretty well for the most part. Had to jump through some hoops to get it set up, as described above, but no major issues since then.
Being a good developer is all about selecting the right tool for the right job and linux is not the right tool for the desktop. This is especially true if you are an interactive developer and you need access to the Adobe suite + 3D apps + Video editing apps + Sound editing apps. Both Mac and Windows are far superior platforms for this type of work.
Now having said that, it definitely does come in handy to know your way around linux when it comes to doing things like doing backend integration or dealing with any sort of serverside stuff like Red5/apache/mysql/whatever. It also makes it a lot easier to diagnose problems within more complex projects when you understand the complete frontend > backend picture.
For me I think it just comes down to the fact that my tolerance for fiddling around with a computer has really dropped off over the years. I’ve done enough OS experimentation to last 3 lifetimes and right now I just want something that works and allows me to get work done without getting in my way.
“Being a good developer is all about selecting the right tool for the right job”
– true
“linux is not the right tool for the desktop”
– opinion
“This is especially true if you are an interactive developer and you need access to the Adobe suite + 3D apps + Video editing apps + Sound editing apps.”
– for the Adobe suite, yes obviously, as I already said. if you need to use app X that doesn’t exist on platform Y, then platform Y is not a good choice for you. as for 3d, video and sound editing, I can’t say. i imagine there are good apps on linux for that stuff.
“my tolerance for fiddling around with a computer has really dropped off”
– my tolerance for letting someone else decide how I should work has dropped off.
Keith, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate your work and I enjoy your blog but when you write a giant post on your attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole don’t get mad when someone comments that there are better solutions available. Nobody is telling you how to work, you are just being overly defensive.
Sorry, didn’t mean to be overly defensive. Just pointing out that “x is wrong for y” is an opinion. For you it may be true. For me, I’m enjoying the hell out of it. A lot of people would agree with you. A lot would agree with me. I totally respect your viewpoint, just don’t state it as fact.
Running Adobe applications on Ubuntu is actually why I decided Ubuntu on the main desktop wasn’t for me. I even attempted to downgrade to Photoshop CS (which, at the time, was the only version working in Wine), but the fonts in Linux were terrible, and Photoshop just didn’t work very well overall.
I attempted to use The Gimp, but don’t care much for the way it handles layers. In Photoshop, I always try to perform non-destructive changes through layer styles where possible, but The Gimp has no concept of this. It’s highly functional, I’ll admit, but not for me.
I did hear about a couple distros (as well as a version of Ubuntu) that were dedicated solely to producing multimedia content (for designers), but again, they just didn’t seem like they’d be a good fit.
However, I do use Ubuntu Server on a spare box in a closet as my home web, file, DLNA (for the PS3), FTP, and development server. No GUI. I love it, and it does help me understand far more about what’s going on with Linux. Being forced to use grep and other bash tools has also helped me realize what powerful tools Linux OSes possess, and how sometimes half-hearted the Windows variants attempt to emulate some basic command-line functionality that has existed for years.
Apologies if this is rambling and incoherent; currently battling the flu.
Try Inkscape. Not an Illustrator replacement but a good vector based app. Was thinking all I need for my entire workflow to work on Linux is if the Inkscape boys can export to SWF with linkages. There is a gap in the market on Linux to generate some serious competition in the graphics arena. Sure it’s expensive to add another OS to your stream but I think one could be surprised at how many new Linux users it might generate. But I must agree the single window experience on Gimp is a feature that will change many things.
If you look at Gimp again try it with the GPS
http://code.google.com/p/gps-gimp-paint-studio/
“- my tolerance for letting someone else decide how I should work has dropped off.”
Best statement I’ve heard in a long, long time!!! haha….
thx for that and the article which was an inspiring read.
cheers
Suggestion for Windows under VM running CS5 apps:
Upgrade your system, in order of the following…
1) Install a dedicated PCIe graphics card. Even in the i3, onboard graphics suck up system RAM and just Suck.. period. You don’t need latest and greatest, but a nVidia 450 GT or an AMD 55xx series would do wonders.
2) Max out your ram (your board does 16GB) and ensure you use the 64bit version of Ubuntu (will have to reinstall if you did not start that way). You can then set your Windows environments (32bit?) to 3.5GB of RAM.
3) Find a Core i5 Quad core processor, like this i5-750:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115215
Then you can dedicate 2 CPUs to your Windows environment (in VirtualBox).
You will see better bang-for-buck with a quad Core i7-870 like:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115213
which is only $100 more than the i5-750, but includes HyperThreading support (appearing and working like 8 CPU cores).
4) Put your virtual machines on the hard drive that is not your OS.
I hope you have a setup similar to the following:
/dev/sda – 1TB drive, partitioned to /, 16GB swap, and /home
/dev/sdb – 2TB drive with a single or multiple partitions of /data or some such.
With the swap on the main OS drive, it will perform better when your /data/WinVirt VBox environment is running. Better still would be to have 8GB swap on disk1 and 8GB on disk2, so that they stripe their functionality and use both disks.
Sorry for the long post. I am a build/configure junky and nerd. 😉
Then,
I appreciate it, though I’m not really looking at running CS5 in a VM anyway. Good data here though. Thanks.
i am by no means a developer, but i too am into builds. i agree with what michael said, but i would reccomend going with a p67 chipset and sandy bridge i5 cpu(once they fix the sata controller bug, although if you do not use raid it will be easy to upgrade to the fixed mobo). one thing i find interesting is the fan controller. it seems kinda overkill for an i3 system.
Yep, looking at the Sandy Bridge, but glad I held out. Haha. yeah, the fan controller is way over the top. TBH, I just thought it looked cool. 🙂 Also, I have a fan on the side, which itself is overkill and a bit noisy, so with the fan controller I can kill that one without opening up the case and unplugging it. At any rate, like I said, I bought a relatively low end system, giving myself plenty of space to upgrade into. Didn’t want to go all out in the first shot. 🙂
Oh Yes, the same story can be applied to me, when i build up my first PCs bit by bit, piece from piece, and when one part got old fashioned, i’ve upgrade it. Does somebody remember the Voodoo graphic cards? 🙂 I was so impressed by the first models true power, and the apparition in the late 90’s of first true 3D games was a major boost for me to save some money and by one.
I was so into the whole PC geek movement, that i made every kind of benchmark test from different components of the pc, and if someone did not satisfy my expectations i mod it, tweak it until my score approx. match the target. I can remember with nostalgia of those glorious days.
@esimov I remember! I had a Voodoo. These were beasts in their time. When my Dual P3 box had 2×512 megs of ram!
@keith Thank you for the insight, I have been thinking of using Ubuntu as an alternative to os X.
cool dev machine, I have been considering the full time leap as these days I am addicted to Intellij for almost all my development which is cross platform.
I really think you need to consider upgrading to an ssd for your os and virtual machines, you have to just try it out, you cant go back ;P. I find all those “green” hard drives really slow down everything, besides any ssd will have more power savings any of those would have.
yeah, going to look into SSD.
Hi Kieth, Glad you’ve joined the movement and become an Ubuntunista. I’ve been using Ubuntu for the last 4 years and in my opinion its the very best OS – Maverick is awesome. Honestly its like Christmas everyday and each version of the distro gets better. I just installed Maverick on my new Alienware M17x and its so fast I experience GForces when I use it. My agency “4ddigital” is about 80% Ubuntu Flex development now. FDT4 is absolutely awesome re an Ubuntu friendly IDE so if you’re not using it it – it is the IDE for Linux – there’s also FB4Linux – Google it – Nuff said.
One good idea a lot of us use is to run Oracle VirtualBox and have Windows virtualized for those programs you need and cannot find Linux substitutes – The integration is so seamless you’d hardly know you are runnning 2 OS and I have found that Windows seems to run faster in VirtualBox than on a PC so long as you allocate the right amount of memory.
Well enjoy a great OS
I totally agree with the statement “its like Christmas everyday”. Each day I find some little thing that makes me smile about the OS. I’m using VirtualBox already. Yes, it’s great. One thing I found out the other day though, you should install VB from the VirttualBox site, not the Ubuntu Software Center. Ubuntu will give you the Open Source Edition, which apparently does not include USB drivers. Drove me crazy trying to figure out why USB worked on one of my machines, but not the other.
Hell yeah it’s awesome, ain’t it? I moved over to Flash/Flex developing in Kubuntu this time last year and I haven’t looked back! So great to be free of all that proprietary junk.
I’d second the Inkscape recommendation for a “alternative” to Illy when doing vector work in Linux: I use it to export SVGs that I then import into my AS3 at compilation time.
Right now looking into using SVGweb’s open source code to mix that up and import SVGs at run time.
I hope to hear more of your exploits developing Flash on Linux!
Keith,
I am happy you made the switch and welcome you on the other side 🙂 Regarding small snippets I am using a plain terminal, text editor and compiler on the command line: “nano Main.as; rm Main.swf; mxmlc Main.as; flashplayer Main.swf”
This edits a Main.as, compiles and launches it for me. I simply like to have the Flex SDK on the PATH variable. Same goes for the Flash Player.
I made two more commands to switch between debug and release player which are very handy. use-flashplayer-debug and use-flashplayer-release which simply point the “flashplayer” executable to a different version.
Regarding the system problem and VirtualBox. I have two computers running, one with Ubuntu and one with Windows. Both are connected with Synergy which works very well (just one mouse + keyboard for both, shared clipboard, etc.). A colleague does the same thing with Ubuntu and Mac OS X. For instance: Develop and compile and Linux and at least with IDEA we can speficy to launch a shell script instead of the final SWF that will launch a Flash Player on the other computer (Windows/OSX) which is just fantastic.
Best,
Joa
Joa, the fact that you use Linux validates my decision! Not sure if I’m ready to switch over to nano as a code editor, at least not for larger projects.
I’ve used Synergy off and on for years, as recently as a couple of weeks ago. Haven’t used it with Ubuntu yet.