Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS 64 bit

The mainboard I bought from TigerDirect.ca to replace the DOA ECS mainboard I got from Newegg.ca arrived on Thursday. NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM NEWEGG - I had two DOA 'free shipping' items from them!  I put it together and stuck in an Ubuntu Linux 9.04 64-bit CD in and it worked.  I had to stick in a PCI network card as this 3 year old version of Ubuntu didn't have the gigabit network drivers for the mainboard.  Yesterday, I boot from an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit CD and the onboard network worked flawlessly.  Today, I brought the box upstairs and hooked  up the HDMI cable to the LCD TV.  It worked flawlessly unlike with Windows Vista (I usually use the analog sound on the Vista machine because of quirks with the HDMI audio driver).  The new computer is a six core AMD Phenom II with 16 gig of DDR3 memory (the case has been through a couple of mainboards already!).

Ubuntu (black), Vista (silver)

YouTube video on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

In the past, YouTube wouldn't work 'out of the box'.  It does now.  I found a video of Stephen Hough playing the Rachmoninov 3rd Piano Concerto (I just got his Hyperion set from Presto Classical).  His set is also available from  Amazon. Java isn't installed, so I had to install Open JDK and a icedtea browser plugin so applets would work in Firefox (how-to is here, but it is easy to do from the software centre in Ubuntu).  Very impressive indeed.  To get a DVD to play in MoviePlayer, I had to download a couple of updates.  The install is a lot smoother than before.  Ubuntu gets better and better.  LTS is a long term service release.  Ubuntu has a new version every six months, but the LTS is every two years (released on April of even number years).  I hope to setup a seismic data processing station on this computer.  I had found a blog of someone who was working on getting Unix seismic stuff to work on Linux.  Have to find it again!