Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) on Acer 5920G

I have been using Ubuntu 7.04 on my new Acer 5920G. There were some issues with it. First problem was that I couldn't use the live CD; had to use alternate CD. And the nv drivers didn't seem to work with the 8600M GT vga on this machine, so no X after the first install. After I used a tool named envy to install the latest Nvidia drivers, I had Gnome running and everything looked fine... till i realized my wireless card was not recognized. Being too lazy to try ndiswrapper, I used the machine without the wireless network capabilities for a while.

After beating the laziness, I decided to try Ubuntu Gutsy on the machine. I grabbed the latest alpha alternate CD (Didn't want to waste a blank CD for the live version which might not work) and installed it. And 'Voila!'. Everything was working... Wireless card, bluetooth, sound... Then I installed the latest Nvidia drivers in the repository, restarted X (at least tried to restart it), and I got an X error like :

" Failed to load module wfb ..."

I did a quick search on Ubuntu Forums, and found this post . I followed the instructions in the post, and now I have Ubuntu Gutsy running on my notebook.

Compiz Fusion comes out of the box with Ubuntu Gutsy. I like the new effects. And I like that everything concerning the Gnome theme (fonts, effect, icons, etc) are configured from one application (System > Preferences > Appearence).

Ubuntu Gutsy has given me only minor troubles. I guess I won't have to wait till the release =)

Qt Jambi

While I was browsing random websites, I stumbled upon Qt Jambi: TrollTech's Framework for Java desktop development. After I ran the demos, I got really impressed. The demos look/run just like native Qt applications, and use many cool Qt functions. Another great step for better Java desktop development.

And also, with the release of Java 6, we have seen great improvements on the GTK Look&Feel. Applications with GTK L&F also look just like native applications.

Since it's also free, I am expecting Java to be the first choice for Linux desktop applications.

Working with GWT

I've been asked to code a multi-user web based project in the second week of my internship (in IBM Turkey, by the way), and left the programming language choice to me. First I thought PHP would be easy, but I decided learning GWT and coding the application in Java would be better for me. I started by reading the excellent tutorials in IBM Developerworks ( 1,2,3,4 ).

I had some bookmarks about GWT, and checked them out. One was Googlipse plug-in for Eclipse, which was renamed to Cypal Studio. After many hours of trying to get it to work, I found out that the problem was Turkish locale. Changing the system language to English helped.

Later, I decided to try Instantiation's GWT Designer. It looked great until I added a RichTextArea to my design. It crashed, but when I removed the RichTextArea, everything was back to normal.

I guess I won't be needing any GUI tools for GWT development. Eclipse with Cypal Studio will be enough.