New machine: UPDATED

I ordered the machine from Directron. I called the next day. It will be ready tomorrow. I called the third day. No one picked up in the three minutes I had to devote to the task. Bill picked me up and ran me over to pick up the box. It was not ready. They are big on getting things out so they threw it together right then. The issue was the extra RAM I needed. Walked out with the box.

Got the system home. Hooked it up to a monitor. Ubuntu would not install. It said something about "cannot mount cdrom". I try the USB drive. Same thing. I decided to try Fedora just to make sure everything on the system works. Well, it did. I then decided to install KDENLive. This is the video software I use. It took me a full day to get it working and none of the codecs worked. Bah. I'm going to make Ubuntu work.

After a bit of research and some trial and error, I found that the "Try Ubuntu without installing" option on the boot uses a different configuration than the rest of the install options. I tried it and it work.d There is an install icon on the desktop after you boot. I did have to remove the video card to get things to install.

The install went quickly. As soon as it was up and running, I set my static IP, installed bunch of software including KDENLive, flash, Chrome and a couple others. Then I put the video card in and got it working through the Ubuntu driver upgrade program. All of this was done in less time than it took me to get one program installed on Fedora. I'm sold again. I reminded Nat to remind me how much I hate Fedora for this reason. She reminded me that I had reminded her of this last time.

I thought about complaining about getting the codecs working on the new computer. It is always something. Right now only the mpeg2 codec really works. The quality blows, but I can get things up on YouTube. I've been here before. I will eventually figure it out.

Announces

• The case I got costs $18. It is flimsy.
• The computer is kind of noisy.
• The drive light doesn't work. That is, it lights up the inside of the box by the back fan somewhere.
• The USB ports are upside down. The logo on my USB drive is on the bottom.
• The home key brought up the default email. I found the setting for such an abomination, but it didn't fix when I changed it. I use the home key all the time. I even need it for video editing.
• Somehow, the numeric keypad was being used for mouse control at some point. Fortunately, the place where this setting is changed actually did it's job and stopped the trouble. I have no idea how I made it do that. It was not doing it at first.

I imagine it will take me a while to get the h264 codec working. It was supposed to have worked straight out of the box. I imagine if I were running a 32 bit build, it would have. This will mean I need to get the stable build of the library off the net and figure out how to build it myself. Then comes the effort of getting KDENLive to recognize and use it. It is so much effort for so little return. I has to be done. I need either h264 or mpeg4. I have to get the audio codecs to work as well.

UPDATE

To get h264 and mpeg4 working in KDENLive, go to synaptic and search on ffmpg. Look for all codec packs that say "unstripped" in the title. Select them all. Then, in KDENLive, re run the configuration wizard and restart the program.

Now, I just need to figure out how to get my home key back and I'm in business.