Bravo, Bravo, Bravo Quantal Quetzal.

[notabug]

I love that bug, so I think it will be borrowed one more time. lol

So far, I've had hundreds of app upgrades and a kernel patch since the initial install of 12.10 b1 and so far, so good. (fingers crossed) My /home is still ext4 as I didn't feel there was a need to change that. After several years of 'testing' Linux distros, I'm still very much a noob, so I try to add only one experiment at a time. That's usually enough to get me in trouble.

[SteveRiley]

In March when installing the 12.04 beta I used btrfs for both home and root, at the next kernel upgrade I found out update-grub does (did?) not support/recognise a btrfs partition, bummer

Oshunluvr is a fan of Btrfs, so perhaps he'll have an opinion or three -- what benefits does Btrfs provide over EXT4 when you aren't using RAID? The Wikipedia article isn't the same as first-hand impressions from someone possessing good experience with the technology.

[dibl]

I've got two cents' worth on this topic, as I have been running a 2-drive btrfs filesystem for almost 2 years now. First, you need to understand that btrfs was really designed with massive storage in mind -- on a single-drive personal computer it offers just about zero benefits (depending ... snapshots and COW might benefit some situations, and you can't do that with ext4). So, there's little reason for a non-RAID, single user system to prefer btrfs over ext4. I don't know why you would prefer it for the OS filesystem, for example -- my OS is on ext4, tuned for the SSD that holds it. I put my btrfs filesystem on a pair of WD1002FAEX drives, connected to a 6G/s SATA port, and used the default configuration (striped data, mirrored metadata). When compression became available, I enabled that. I have about 750GB of data on that system, which has been doing fine since December of 2010.

root@imerabox:/home/don# btrfs fi df /mnt/DATA Data, RAID0: total=966.00GB, used=771.86GB Data: total=8.00MB, used=0.00 System, RAID1: total=8.00MB, used=84.00KB System: total=4.00MB, used=0.00 Metadata, RAID1: total=37.62GB, used=1.56GB Metadata: total=8.00MB, used=0.00

root@imerabox:/home/don# btrfs scrub status /mnt/DATA scrub status for c112ed57-0e33-4d4b-82c9-5c55932c529d         scrub started at Thu Sep  6 13:49:07 2012 and finished after 3742 seconds         total bytes scrubbed: 774.98GB with 0 errors

[GreyGeek]

It seems like btrfs is similar to zfs, which I experimented with last year. I came to the same conclusions about it that Dibl did about btrfs. My all-time favorite FS was ReiserFS 3.0, but when Reiser was sent up the river I switched to EXT3 and now EXT4. I suspect that we will be using EXT4 for a long time.

[SteveRiley]

Didn't Ted Ts'o once state that he thought EXT4 was useful only as a stop-gap unti something better came along? I wonder if maybe good enough in this case is, in fact, good enough.

[Snowhog]

ext4 here. Reserfs, unfortunately, will never see the light of day, unless Reiser releases the code or it's back engineered.

[mdye]

I've always had a soft spot for Kubuntu, but there have always been a couple little things that have kept me from using it as my go-to OS of choice. The terrible choice of native browsers (especially Konqueror in early versions - ugh! And Firefox/Chrome(ium) integrate so terribly in KDE) and lack of good integration with Google services would always, at some point, send me back to the much more integrated arms of straight up Ubuntu. It also convinced me that the folks at KDE probably don't use the internet as their applications don't do a good job of complying with proper standards. Well, I've been using Kubuntu since the Quetzal release, and I'm loving it - so many improvements. Rekonq - despite a few rough spots (what must one do to get good Google Docs support and what happened to calendar sync? It's now useless) is vastly improved even over older versions of itself. And FINALLY, as woodsmoke pointed out, we have pretty good integration with Akonadi and Google PIM services. But why must I authorize it every single time? Why isn't once enough?

[oshunluvr]

Re: Grub and BTRFS - works very well for me but when I initally installed 12.04 I was still using a separate /boot. Supposedly, you could boot to a btrfs partition as early as 10.10 but I never tried it. I am currently booting 12.04 on a BTRFS multiple device (aka RAID) install and hosting GRUB from that install and all works well.

As far as to why use BTRFS on a single drive install?

1. (As dibl mentioned) Snapshots. You can roll-back an upgrade with a few commands or easily copy the current state of /home.

The currently prefered method to do a BTRFS install is to install to a single device (in BTRFS terms this can be a whole drive, a single partition, or a combination of either or both). /home will automatically be put into a separate subvolume by Ubiquity - which brings me to the second reason to use BTRFS on a single drive system:

2. Consolidation of free space: Using subvolumes rather than partitions allows the total amount of free space to be available to all portions of your filesystem. Basically; you keep your files separate but your free space combined. See my post on installing and multi-booting to the same BTRFS device. I see this as a real benefit to those with limited budgets or older systems with very small hard drives. If you have to divide 80GB up for two or three installs plus a home partition - 5 or 6 GB not being used could be a real deficit. Also: a small cheap 30-40GB SSD becomes more feasible and functional as a solo drive using this method.

3. SSD optimzation: Combined with the above comments - 'nuff said.

4. On-Line Expandability: You can add or subtract drives or partitions from a BTRFS device while you're still using the system. If you have a single drive today, but are adding one with your Xmas cash: You need only power down, plug in drive two, boot up and log in, add the new drive to your existing BTRFS device, balance the file system, use your new space.

Oh look Steve, I came up with four!

[woodsmoke]

An update.
a) There are daily updates. I previously did all of them using sudo apt-get to ensure that things got done. Lately I have used MUON and it has worked ok.
b) The test making program and the crossword puzzle programs have been working.
NOTE:
i) the test making program's font is rendered slightly "finer" than when done on a Windblows program.
ii) The crossword program does, indeed work, but immediately after exporting the .pdf to be printed when one attempts to use the program again, it crashes. (Which I can live with! )
iii) Kontact still works, Kmail now defaults to not being online, one is presented with a large, well made, window that says it is offline and to "click here".

I am not commenting on the "goodness" of defaulting to being online or offline, some prefer one some prefer the other.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

And Firefox/Chrome(ium) integrate so terribly in KDE

Search the forum here for instructions on how to use the Blue Shell PPA for Firefox, which brings back the integration we had before.

lack of good integration with Google services... the folks at KDE probably don't use the internet as their applications don't do a good job of complying with proper standards

I'd say it's Google who doesn't comply with standards. I run my own SMTP/IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV server and the KMail/KOrganizer/KAddressbook work perfectly. Google appears to tinker with its APIs and periodically break stuff. And they're inconsistent. For example:

CalDAV

https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[I]your-Google-calendar-ID[/I]/events/

CardDAV (two variants -- recently discovered)

https://www.google.com/m8/carddav
https://google.com/m8/carddav/principals/__uids__/[i]your-username[/i]@gmail.com/lists/default/

Rekonq - despite a few rough spots (what must one do to get good Google Docs support and what happened to calendar sync? It's now useless

See above re: standards. Check out the scroll bar whenever you're visiting a Google property. Looks different, no? Google actually implements their own scroll method in JavaScript. Why? Silly.

But why must I authorize it every single time? Why isn't once enough?

Open up KWallet and remove the password from the wallet. No more reauth prompts.

[woodsmoke]

I, particularly, probably have run across the situation wherein "periodically" the Kmail/Kcalendar daemon complains that the password for the SMTP account password is not correct.

However, when I then open Kontact everything then runs.

This may be related to my having implemented the stupid two password situation, I don't know.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Kubu's Plasma Desktop: all things to all people

Sitting waiting for the VP debate and eating a hot cheddar cheese/rye bread sandwich I was thinking about the widget dashboard and something just sprang into my head:

Kubuntu, or KDE, should change the symbol:....

It should be a Swiss Army Knife!

The Plasma Desktop truely is all things to all people!

EXPECTIALLY the Kubuntu Plasma Desktop!

well, maybe it isn't all things to all people for those CLI folks! lol

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Kontact just popped, no pun intended, a new thing for moi!

It happened that I had a conflict in two items, one that was a previous calendar date and a new one that I entered in the same time frame.

A "confilct resolution" popup appeared, with the two items on the right and left side of the inside of the popup.

There were three buttons that said, "keep the left option" "keep the right option" , "keep both".

For some reason the "keep the left option" didn't work, it looked like that was the one I wanted, so I clicked "keep both" and it worked.

Kontact just seems to keep on getting more improvements.

If anyone has comments on the conflict resolution box, I, for one, would be glad to read them.

woodsmoke

[Teunis]

Hmm.
Being on holidays including in hotels with awful net access I still continued to update this Kubuntu12.10.
Until about a week ago when it quit working, at least the network manager no longer did.
So I logged in through the CLI and continued with apt-get resulting in losing the mouse too.

Doing some gymnastics (ultimate corner of he balcony) and the boring 12.04 install I was able to log in to an alternative access point and download the beta2, upsetting the better half I sat at the laptop and installed it successfully.
And again it works great :cool:

[woodsmoke]

I'm quite glad Tenuis.

I did a couple of cross country treks with Linux on a lappy, but didn't try to UPGRADE !! lol

woodsmoke