At first our Jam experience seemed like a failure. We had two attend, and one of them was me. Thank goodness for Charles (acerimmer); his arrival made the afternoon fun. The first difficulty was Internet connectivity -- my laptop reported that it was getting a good wireless connection, but I was only able to use IRC and get webpages for about 10 minutes in the four hours at the library.
So the ability to connect with others around the state, and around the world was pretty much nil.
Technically, I was unable to load Kubuntu Mav in a virtualbox. I found out from Charles that I had not allocated enough memory, and that K/ubuntu's package might be missing a crucial xorg.conf file. Since the Kubuntu developers didn't mention this last point, more investigation is needed.
Also, I was unable to fully load the Mav LiveCD. I found out that my issues were not uncommon: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickMeerkat/TechnicalOverview. This is still alpha software, after all.
My liveUSB key was also a fail, giving the same error message to both me and Charles. I found out that it wasn't my fault, but that of Lucid. After removing that useless LiveUSB install from my cute little 8-gig USB key, I copied the ISO onto it, but Charles was unable to load it into a virtualbox on his laptop either -- incompatible 64-bit systems! I'm not sure what that's about, but hope he'll file a bug about it.
After we talked some about upcoming LoCo events, we decided to leave early. We had both run out of options for testing.
However, the Jam continues through Sunday, and once I got home and got connected again, androidbruce gave me a great idea: swap out my present hard drive for my old backup one, and install on that! Although I was unsuccessful at partitioning off the old backup, which is mostly music, not much harm done to lose it, either. I had hoped to save it, just to be able to play some music during testing. Oh, well! So, as Scarlett O'Hara so wisely observed, Tomorrow is another day!
PS: Also -- more publicity is better! Craigslist? Any other ideas for spreading the word?
xorg.conf has been neither included nor necessary in Ubuntu since 2007 or so.
ReplyDeleteJust to wrap up, I was able to start virtualbox successfully, and load up to the splash in the LiveCD. However, it wouldn't load because of an incompatibility in the 64-bit kernel expected, which I reported on the Feedback page. My plan was to swap hard-drives and try out Mav in my spare, but it turns out that HD has too many pins to fit into my laptop. ::sigh::
ReplyDeleteOn the upside, I found my missing hoop earring. There is balance in the Universe.
I wouldn't be so hard on yourselves attendance-wise, I consider an event a success if any of these conditions are satisfied:
ReplyDelete1. more than just me shows up
2. someone at the venue asks about Ubuntu
3. I get something useful to Ubuntu done
So even if 1&2 aren't satisfied, 3 is fine!