Living in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS next week

I am getting a shiny new desktop machine tomorrow from 4DC and i am going to install Ubuntu Desktop and try and use it for a week.

My motivation was that after cracking my laptop screen last weekend, I need a machine to use while it's being serviced.

As my new desktop will have 4Gb of ram, i want something 64-bit. Windows is a joke in that regard IMHO, I actually do work on my machine so Vista is a totally dud option for me and let's face it, Ubuntu is the cute posterboy linux distro, so my decision was easy.

I am going to try out Mythtv and use this machine as a media center, so i'm getting a fusion dual HDTV receiver. I'll be interested to see how it flys.

Work wise, Firefox 3.0 beta5 is the default browser (nice) so email (gmail) and web is covered. Server wise Mapguide, Coldfusion, Oracle XE, VMWare are all supported.

For an IDE, I am going to use CFEclipse via Pulse and Oracle SQL Developer should cover all the bases.

I will have an XP image (legal) under VMWare handy for any irreplaceable Window's stuff like Mapguide Studio. But i will avoid windows all week if i can :)

stay tuned for updates

Build notes for Mapguide 2.0 on CentOS

My notes when following these build guides: BuildingAndConfiguringMGOSOnLinux.pdf and OpenSourceBuild__README.html

My Linux knowledge is rather average, i know bits and have used it for over 10 years on and off, occasionally some Solaris, but i am by no means an expert.

1. It's not supported yet on 64-bit Linux, use a 32-bit version
2. Make sure you install the GNOME Software Development packages, otherwise you will hit an error with xslt-config being missing (libxslt-devel libxslt) but this was a big hassle on RHEL 4.
   
3. If your using Vmware Player and your on a dual core machine, add numvcpus = "2" to your .VMX file to use both CPU's otherwise you'll only ever see 50% CPU usage
4. I started with RHEL 4 and then switched to using CentOS coz i didn't have a Redhat Network account which gave me access and yum wasn't playing nice for some reason (couldn't find packages?) where as CentOS just works with any login requirement.
5. I used the thoughtpolice vmware image @ http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/#centos4.6
6. For Centos the Yum Extender is pretty good for managing packages, use "yum install yumextender"
7. I built the FDO, i believe the prebuilt RHEL4 fdo binaries get installed to /usr/local/fdo-3.3.0/lib , the download notes don't make that clear (i guess it would be better as an rpm really?).
8. If you have the apr packages installed that will break apache if they are the 0.94 versions, the error message i got was "undefined reference to 'apr_os_uuid_get'". I just removed the package, which did uninstall the default apache httpd and other stuff like subversion also depends on (so it's the wrong thing to do!).
9. SSH is your friend :) I use Putty and Winscp on XP
   
10. I changed the fdo build_thirdparty.sh and build_linux.sh from #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/bash after i hit "acinclude.m4:7: warning: underquoted definition of FDO_HELP_STRING"
11. Nabble FDO Users and Mapguide are the best source of information and the best place to ask questions for this stuff. Just search before you ask!
12. uncomment the lines: AddHandler mgmapagent_handler fcgi and LoadModule mgmapagent_module modules/mod_mgmapagent.so in /usr/local/mapguideopensource/webserverextensions/apache/conf/mapguide.conf or you will get the mapguide.fcgi binary returned :(
13. I had a font problem, almost wingdingy which was solved by copying verdana.ttf from /usr/share/fonts/msttcorefonts
    

So it's up and running, mapadmin works and i managed to load a sample package. the map didn't show tho at first, until i did #12 ...

phew

BTW My Wmare image ended up being about 6.8 Gb at the end