I installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron onto my work laptop today, the HP Compaq 8510w. This post describes the experience, and covers:

	- the install;
	- what hardware worked and what didn't;
	- bonus: how I got my [rails](http://www.rubyonrails.org/) development environment up and running (ruby/rails/netbeans).

The Install

This went very smoothly, aside from one initial hiccup. Here’s a tip to avoid it:

	- Install from the "Install Ubuntu" option rather than booting into the LiveCD using the "Try" option; when I used the "Try" option, the partitioner refused to work. Booting directly to the install resulted in a working partitioner.

First Boot

What works and what doesn’t on first boot? Live-blogging at its finest! Or it would be, were I to get off my sorry behind and publish after each test rather than at the end of the process.

I am informed one way to become a better writer is to write. Then write some more. And so on. This alarmed me, but not so much as it will alarm you when you discover what I have in store for you today.

Something which has been providing excitement chez Mike is our rather characterful heating system. The system is so old it was probably a little past it by the time I was born; it could charitably be described as temperamental. It provides two (theoretically) discrete services: “Heating” and “Hot Water”, controllable via a so-retro-it-would-hurt-if-it-were-not-actually-from-the-70s control device. In this context, “controllable” should be read as “often not controllable”.

Lately, I have thought a little on how public and private people would choose to be, on average, if they did not need worry about intruding on others.

Previously, most aspects of a person’s life— especially their day-to-day activities —were de facto private, as there was simply no way to expose them without significant intrusion upon others. The internet is becoming ubiquitous meaning this is no longer necessarily the case. Why? Because the internet provides a perfect asynchronous medium allowing new modes of communication.

My interest was caught by jdub

michael-rhodes-computer:~ mike
$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
230 ruby
72 cd
26 ls
21 rake
15 gem
14 script/server
14 irb
12 ping
11 exit
10 sudo

I’m going to Seattle for two weeks, meaning posting will be sporadic, if at all. On the work side, I am attending the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media for three days, then holidaying with a university friend for a couple of weeks.