The Emperor
I was faced with a tricky problem. In a little over a week, I’m going to Brazil (mostly staying in a place a very long way from the nearest city or town) for three weeks. I think that it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll have any way of connecting my own computer to the internet for most of that time (though I may find the odd cybercafe somewhere), but I still wanted to have a computer with me. I need to take notes, analyse results, read papers and so on, all of which would be much easier with a laptop than without.
But here’s where the problem comes in; I really didn’t want to risk taking my PowerBook. I’m likely to be working in fairly rough conditions, and I’m spending a few days at either end of the trip in Sao Paulo, where there is—-let’s face it—-at least some possibility of the computer being stolen. It’s insured, but I can’t face the disruption of hassle of having to get a new one, recreate my system from backups and so on. And I have to admit that I feel terribly attached to my Mac—-I just didn’t feel that I could put my baby my computer in the line of fire like that.
Then Mr. Bsag had a brainwave; why not set up my ancient and otherwise unused PC laptop (aka ‘Ugly Laptop’) and take that out? It’s also insured, and I wouldn’t be too heartbroken or inconvenienced if it got broken or stolen, nor would I spend my time fretting about it getting scratched. The boy’s a genius.
So I’ve been spending some time getting it all set up. I had been playing with Slax on it, but I wanted to do a proper installation of Linux before travelling. I mentioned before that I’d tried Ubuntu but found video problems during the installation. When the latest version of Ubuntu came out, I tried that and got the same behaviour again. In a moment of inspiration, I tried hitting they keyboard combination to switch between the output for an external monitor and the LCD, and after a cycle, found that the image miraculously refreshed itself properly. So Ubuntu ‘Hoary Hedgehog’ seemed like a good choice for a permanent installation.
This time, everything went perfectly. I think that Ubuntu must—-along with Slax—-be one of the least painful installations I’ve ever done. I went with the defaults the whole way, and the only choices I had to make during installation were my language, time zone and preferred screen resolution—-all very easy. It set up my network connection automatically, and I’ve found that it even hibernates properly, which is something I always used to have trouble with under RedHat. And that was more or less that. It already came with a lot of the software I needed (vim, Firefox, terminals galore and Open Office for those times when you’ve got to read MS Office files), and installing other stuff is very easy with the Debian apt-get command.
The real joy of running a Unix-based system (any Unix-based system) is that a lot of the tools are interchangeable, particularly if you use portable files like plain text, HTML or PDF. I plan to get everything back on to my Mac via my USB key or over the network when I get back.
One of the tasks when setting up a new machine is to choose a hostname. I’ve had a penguin theme for my machines for a while (Rockhopper, Macaroni and so on), so I chose Emperor. He’s got a long way to travel, and there’s a chance that he might not come back—-it seemed appropriate, somehow.
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Have been very impressed by Ubuntu. I've got it on my old iBook dual-booting, just for the hell of it really, and while it's not OS X it's pretty much always behaved perfectly, apart from it mysteriously not being able to use the speakers properly (on headphones it's fine, and I have no idea what the problem is).
When I read the first paragraph and a half my brain was already screaming "cheap laptop + Linux".... I understand that Linux is very popular in Brazil, actually.
by fridgemagnet @ 23/08/2005 7:08 pm • Permalink •
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How are you going to charge it? I've got an old Olivetti Portable......... not really. I use a Dell PDA for text based stuff, but then, my requirements are simple, just disconnected jottings and framents of prose.----- Have fun and congrats on a good solution!
by Jesse Andrews @ 23/08/2005 7:08 pm • Permalink •
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I'm using a cheap and light weight laptop as a terminal to my office based PC. This has the advantage I can get drunk and forget my PC in a taxi without losing all my files. I'm using Windows Terminal Services. There must be some program for the Mac as well. Maybe Netop will cut it. A good bandwith is necessary though.
Cheers.
by Christer @ 24/08/2005 7:08 am • Permalink •
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Hey, where are you staying here at São Paulo?? If you need anything, maybe I can help. Good solution, btw. Good luck. And welcome to Brazil... []s
by fserb @ 24/08/2005 12:09 pm • Permalink •
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Jonathan Briggs: I believe that they have electricity in Brazil
. Actually, I'm not camping, so charging shouldn't be too much a problem. I meant that I would be using the laptop in the field, which is likely to be dusty, wet and crawling with little insects who might might make their home on the motherboard. As long as this doesn't happen, I'll be happy.
fridgemagnet: Yes, I've been really impressed by it. So far I've got LaTeX installed for work, and just in case I have any spare time, Ruby, Rails, lighttpd and svn so that I can work on Tracks. I even imported all my contacts and calendars to Evolution in a couple of clicks. All very painless. It makes me wonder more and more why people who have PCs bother with Windows.
Christer: Good plan, but as I'll almost certainly be without a network connection for most or all of the time, that wouldn't be a good solution for me.
fserb: Thanks! I'm only there for a few days with the group, then I'm off to the Pantanal.
by bsag @ 25/08/2005 8:09 pm • Permalink •
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I don't presume to know what Jonathan Briggs meant, but perhaps you should find out some more about the electricity in the part of Brazil you'll be staying and the tolerances of your laptop adapter. As voltage level, frequency and type of sockets may differ from what you're used to.
by _V_ @ 26/08/2005 5:09 pm • Permalink •
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V: I thought that Jonathan was wondering how I was going to charge up if I was camping, which would indeed have been a problem. I've used the excellent guide that you linked to every time I've travelled, and found it to be very useful for working out what I need to take in the way of socket adapters. I actually find that most of the stuff I take with me (laptops, mobile phone chargers, iPod charger etc.) are fine anywhere as far as voltage and frequency goes, because most manufacturers now make one kind of adapter for a global market which is rated to work from 100-240V and 50-60 Hz, which covers pretty much everywhere. As for socket types, Brazil is unusual in having both the 2 flat pin US types and the 2 round pin European types of sockets, so I'm taking both just to be safe. Brazil also has both 110 and 240 V supplies, sometimes in the same city
.
I do travel quite a bit, so this kind of thing is fairly familiar to me.
by bsag @ 27/08/2005 3:08 pm • Permalink •
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bsag: I'm glad you're going so well prepared.
by _V_ @ 27/08/2005 8:09 pm • Permalink •
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