12.04 deployment

[Roasted]

I hereby present to you today's agenda in completed form... a lab in our one middle school:

http://i.imgur.com/aNWnB.jpg

Yesterday's systems residing on the counter of shame:

http://i.imgur.com/4hdii.jpg

As of today, Ubuntu powered mini ITX boxes. To say these are a massive upgrade would be a severe understatement.

Our testing of 12.04 has been so positive, we decided with the odd timing of when our lab was getting deployed vs 12.04 being released, we'd cut to the chase. This lab is Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit powered. :guitar:

[uRock]

Kool!

[Bucky Ball]

Risky! (but cool) ;)

[papibe]

Very cool! :o

[BertN45]

That is the right and smart decision. Chapeau!

I run three of the 5 PCs with Ubuntu 12.04 without any major problem. The two old P-IIIs run Lubuntu 11.10 and Windows XP.

[tadcan]

Why not install 12.04 on the imacs?

[user1397]

Why not install 12.04 on the imacs?

those looked like some pretty old imacs, probably don't have that good specs

[Roasted]

Why not install 12.04 on the imacs?

The unfortunate reality of educational material is a lot of it is heavily flash based. While we could install a PowerPC variant of Ubuntu, flash on Linux PowerPC comes up short. In time, that will change, but right now, today, it's an issue still.

On the flip side, I've installed Ubuntu on Intel based Macbooks with extreme success. In fact, Ubuntu runs a bit quicker than OSX did.

That's kind of where the snag up is... Those systems are likely going to be placed randomly in classrooms for general purpose web browsing. I mean, it is handy to have a system to quick Google something in the back of the room, but when it comes to actual productivity grade jobs, those iMacs have little use.

[Phoenixie]

That's great, but why the blue background? It reminds me of the blue screen of death LOL.

[BeRoot ReBoot]

Whoever approved using pre-release software in a production environment ought to lose their job and never work in an IT-related field again. :mad:

[Roasted]

That's great, but why the blue background? It reminds me of the blue screen of death LOL.

Blue is one of the main colors for the school. Since we were throwing Unity at them, it was decided to keep the background minimalistic so the eye was drawn to the Unity bar first. As time progresses, it'll be changed.

As a side note, this also suggests a +1 at Unity considering we're letting it on the systems. Our other Ubuntu systems are running a customized in-house heavily themed XFCE setup. Initially, nobody thought really highly of Unity. The best someone said is "I'm sure in time it may be half decent, but still, no thanks." I personally did not like it at all when I first used it. The more we played with 12.04, the more we realized, hey Unity isn't bad at all. In fact, it's pretty good this time around! I'm still learning the ins and outs of it, and I still have some minor quirks with it (I'd like a way to make it so all of my a-z applications show up FIRST instead of recent items, etc.), but it's nice enough to actually curl my death grip away from Gnome Shell.


Whoever approved using pre-release software in a production environment ought to lose their job and never work in an IT-related field again. :mad:

If that's the case, we'd all lose our jobs, since we all did extensive testing on it. I'm failing to see the issue here. This decision wouldn't have been made if it weren't for the success we've had. :guitar:

[Bucky Ball]

If that's the case, we'd all lose our jobs, since we all did extensive testing on it. I'm failing to see the issue here. This decision wouldn't have been made if it weren't for the success we've had. :guitar:

Nice point. ;)

Perhaps hold back on updating til the final release! But great to hear it's working so well. That is good for the whole community ...

And one of these days I might warm to Unity ... can't leave xfce alone is my problem ... I have Unity installed; maybe I should experiment a little more. It's going to take a while to mature, of course, by which time it will probably be normal and we'll have forgotten about the whole debate. Perhaps!

[Roasted]

Nice point. ;)

Perhaps hold back on updating til the final release! But great to hear it's working so well. That is good for the whole community ...

And one of these days I might warm to Unity ... can't leave xfce alone is my problem ... I have Unity installed; maybe I should experiment a little more. It's going to take a while to mature, of course, by which time it will probably be normal and we'll have forgotten about the whole debate. Perhaps!

Well, I'm still getting used to it, and there's a few minor things I'd like to see changed. But the more I use it, the more I "get" it. Don't get me wrong, Unity in 11.04 was terrible. In 11.10, it was nicer, but not enough for me to use. 12.04's release of it has shown me it's evolving into something rather nice... But hey, if you don't like it, we certainly have no shortage of rather awesome alternatives. ;)

[SemiExpert]

As of today, Ubuntu powered mini ITX boxes. To say these are a massive upgrade would be a severe understatement.



Hardware specs? Enclosure, power supply, motherboard, processor, RAM, etc. I'm very interested in the mITX form factor.

[samalex]

I may have missed it, but what were the specs on the iMacs and the new Ubuntu new systems? I agree with whomever mentioned putting Ubuntu on the Macs, if they're Intel-based Ubuntu will probably run rather well.

[Roasted]

Hardware specs? Enclosure, power supply, motherboard, processor, RAM, etc. I'm very interested in the mITX form factor.

AMD E350 APU, ASRock H61 Mobo, 8 GB DDR3 RAM. Enclosure I'm not positive of, but it came off of NewEgg... PSU was included. No optical drive. HDD is Crucial M4 SATA3 64GB.


I may have missed it, but what were the specs on the iMacs and the new Ubuntu new systems? I agree with whomever mentioned putting Ubuntu on the Macs, if they're Intel-based Ubuntu will probably run rather well.

Not entirely sure of the specs of the iMacs, as this lab wasn't part of one of the buildings I'm responsible for. I do know they were PowerPC based, and would likely run a PowerPC variant of Linux (including Ubuntu's PowerPC community variant) beautifully, but Linux PowerPC support for flash is pretty slim. Love flash or hate it, it still has a very real presence in educational applications for the time being, so unless it supported our flash-based sites decently, it would be a dead end.

[CharlesA]

AMD E350 APU, ASRock H61 Mobo, 8 GB DDR3 RAM. Enclosure I'm not positive of, but it came off of NewEgg... PSU was included. No optical drive. HDD is Crucial M4 SATA3 64GB.

Holy carp. That would make a nice HTPC.

[Tac2]

Looks beautiful ;)

Interesting that you're using the AMD E350 APU. Are you using proprietary drivers or open source? Have you had any issues?

[sefs]

Whoever approved using pre-release software in a production environment ought to lose their job and never work in an IT-related field again. :mad:

I don't agree with this. I think progression/innovation can only come with taking measured or calculated risks, and to tell you the truth some of the best ones did not even bother with the measured or calculated part.

I like this setup. Wish I could get my hands on one of those old macs. You say they are PPC?

[grahammechanical]

Whoever approved using pre-release software in a production environment ought to lose their job and never work in an IT-related field again. :mad:

And what has been your experience in running 12.04?

I have been using it since November 2011. While I would not recommend to anyone that they use a pre-release version of Ubuntu on a production machine. I do know from experience that 12.04 is very stable. I trust it.

The key factor is how safe is your data.

Let us compare risk. What is the level of risk to data when running

1) Ubuntu pre-release?

2) Microsoft Windows without virus scanners and strict Internet controls?

Regards

[SemiExpert]

AMD E350 APU, ASRock H61 Mobo, 8 GB DDR3 RAM. Enclosure I'm not positive of, but it came off of NewEgg... PSU was included. No optical drive. HDD is Crucial M4 SATA3 64GB.




Now that is a very interesting combination of hardware?

I do have to wonder how you plan on updating the firmware for the SSDs? Crucial has a good reputation, but I do know that the 64GB M4 had a so-called 5200 hour bug. It was apparently fixed with firmware update 309. Not a problem if the SSDs shipped with firmware 309. Personally, I assume that every SSD will eventually require a firmware update.

It would also be very useful to track hardware failures and driver issues, since you have a nice sample group.

[Roasted]

Looks beautiful ;)

Interesting that you're using the AMD E350 APU. Are you using proprietary drivers or open source? Have you had any issues?

Open source drivers. No major issues so far. The things we're utilizing from this gear just kind of work. We're also not utilizing it over HDMI or anything, which is where I ran into headaches with an E350 a while back I built for my HTPC, as I could not get decent video to work or audio over HDMI to work. I ended up returning it and opted for a G620/Nvidia GT430 build which has worked out perfect. But in this case, the E350 turned out to be really decent, and also cut costs a bit since the price was attractive for the CPU/GPU/Mobo combo unit.



Now that is a very interesting combination of hardware?

I do have to wonder how you plan on updating the firmware for the SSDs? Crucial has a good reputation, but I do know that the 64GB M4 had a so-called 5200 hour bug. It was apparently fixed with firmware update 309. Not a problem if the SSDs shipped with firmware 309. Personally, I assume that every SSD will eventually require a firmware update.

It would also be very useful to track hardware failures and driver issues, since you have a nice sample group.

I'm not entirely sure about the firmware. They were bought recently so it's hard to say. We did do a BIOS update just prior to installing Ubuntu, but that was it. How is firmware normally upgraded on SSDs?

[SemiExpert]

I'm not entirely sure about the firmware. They were bought recently so it's hard to say. We did do a BIOS update just prior to installing Ubuntu, but that was it. How is firmware normally upgraded on SSDs?

http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx
Version Compatible Models Download 0309 Crucial m4 2.5-inch SSD Update Firmware through Windows Tool (Windows® 7 only) guide — download firmware Update Firmware through bootable media guide — download firmware Release Date: 01/13/2012 Change Log: Changes made in version 0009 (m4 can be updated to revision 0309 directly from either revision 0001, 0002, or 0009) Correct a condition where an incorrect response to a SMART counter will cause the m4 drive to become unresponsive after 5184 hours of Power-on time.

There does seem to have been a 5200 hour bug, and the updated firmware is from January of 2012, so I'm assuming that the firmware version of your SSDs depends on the date of production. I don't have any person experience with SSDs, so the firmware issue with Linux does concern me. Here's a link:

http://www.storagereview.com/how_upgrade_crucial_ssd_firmware

[papibe]

How is firmware normally upgraded on SSDs?
I can't say for every brand, but latest Crucial's can be upgraded easily (no Windows required). I recently upgraded an M4 128 to firmware 309.

They have an 'bootable media' option. You follow the usual steps: download, clean a USB with Gparted, and copy it with Unetbootin.

It's a DOS image (maybe FreeDOS?). You boot on it, run the update, and you are done.

Also, I'm glad to report that later I successfully did a 'Secure Erase' using Parted Magic (firmware remained).

Regards.

[Roasted]

I'd like to thank you guys for bringing this to our attention. It'll be looked into to make sure we're updated. If not, it's certainly on the to do list!