PHP IDE

Posted 21:39, 23/4/2007, in Ubuntu

I finally have a working PHP IDE under Ubuntu, although the hoops I had to go through were a little ridiculous. For my own future reference, here's how to do it:

1. Install Eclipse via. the standard Add/Remove applications interface
2. Use the built in software update feature to add a number of packages from the Callisto download site, details of which pages is on the PDT installation page (which by the way is the first installation page I've seen that has no installation instructions). Some guessing required!
   
   • Models and Model Development -> XML Schema Infoset Model (XSD)
   • Web and J2EE Development -> Web Standard Tools (WST)
3. Add Zend has a download site using the software update feature in Eclipse (clear instructions for this are on Zend's PDT page).
4. Attempt to install PDT (it will fail)
5. Go back to through the Callisto software update process and install which ever package it was that PDT depends on
6. Add whichever package the above package depends on
7. Install PDT

et. voila, a working PHP IDE. Quite why the Eclipse installer isn't able to automatically select package dependencies is beyond me, but I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation.

First impressions of Eclipse/PDT are good. The sheer number of configuration options is daunting, but it has some very sensible defaults, along with some nice features sorely missing from PHPEdit, such as sensible auto-completiong and code folding.

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Ubuntu part #3

Posted 21:24, 20/4/2007, in Ubuntu

Some more updates:

The weird font display has been greatly improved by installing the latest versions of freetype, see this thread for details. Installing the MS core fonts package has helped as well, as web pages are now being displayed using the same fonts they would be on Windows.

I'll have to give up on getting Beryl (fancy desktop effects) working for now. It seems the drivers for the later ATI cards don't yet support the funky stuff required to run those sorts of apps (among other things - basically, ATI on Linux sucks). There's some more info on the ubuntu forums, and a short-but-sweet confirmation on AMD's knowledge base.

I'm still having a suprising amount of difficulty connecting to the samba share on my web dev box. Googling anything remotely connected to this reveals hundreds of articles on how to share files from your Ubuntu PC using samba, but what I want to do is the reverse. But I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Installing mplayer has given me some better movie file playback (there's some weird codec issue with the built-in player - the colours on most AVI files appear odd).  Next I need to figure out how to change the default file associations, so these files open in mplayer by default. Still no look with the 5.1 sound, I think it's due to a lack of driver for my onboard sound card. More investigation required.

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Ubuntu - first impressions

Posted 00:31, 20/4/2007, in Ubuntu

Yesterday I tried Ubuntu for the first time in the form of the "edgy" live CD (where you can play about with the OS without actually installing anything). Today I downloaded and installed the newly released "feisty fawn" version, and I'm impressed.

The installation process is pretty straightforward. The only thing that could be improved (if anything) is the partition selection screen. Rather than giving me a list of the machine names of various hard discs (fairly cryptic), give me some options like "Do you wish to replace your existing Windows XP installation?  Or install Ubuntu alongside your existing Windows installation on Hard disc 1 (name here), 200GB, Hard disc 2 (name here)."

Problems encountered

The main problem post-install was it not correctly recognising the screen resolutions my monitor and graphics card are capable of displaying. This left me using a horribly stretched 1600x1200 on a widescreen monitor. A quick bit of googling revealed that this is a known issue with whatever component detects screen resolutions.  Editing the config file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf to add my preferred resolution (1920x1200) fixed this.

Things I like so far

The main strength of running an open source operating system - the add/remove applications option from the menu opens a system that allows me to browse literally thousands of free, categorised and rated software apps. All installable within a click or two of the button.

The process for installing codecs is nicely implemented. There is a built in media player app, but without any codecs (for copyright reasons). When I double-clicked on an mp3 file for the first time it told me I needed to install a codec to play mp3 files, and gave me a list of suitable ones. Two clicks later and it was installed. The same works for videos.

Stuff I still need to figure out:

• Beryl - sounds awesome from what I've read, but I haven't got it to work yet (the settings app works fun but running it from the command line gives me the error "No composite extension")
• Although my sound card was recognised and works, I'm only getting sound out of two of the speakers.

And things I'm not quite decided on yet:

The look and feel - although I can see what they were trying to do with the whole "tribal" theme (from the sound effects to the orangey-brown colour scheme), sit it alongside with Windows Vista and you'd be hard pushed to say Ubuntu looks better. I know desktop appearance is easily changed, but first impressions matter.

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Ubuntu 7.04 ("Feisty Fawn") released

Posted 17:39, 19/4/2007, in Ubuntu

After having it sitting on my desktop for weeks, I finally got around to burning and trying out Ubuntu yesterday. And today they've released a major new version (typical!).

The 700MB CD image Ubuntu provide can either be used to install the full OS, or to try it out without affecting your Windows installation (as the OS can be run straight off the CD). If you choose the latter option, the operating system will run much slower than it would normally (and you won't be able to install anything), but it's a good way to get an idea what it's like to use, and more importantly how well your hardware will work with it out-of-the-box.

Early impressions were good, except that my USB mouse didn't work so I had to dig out an old-style PS/2 one.

Now that I use GMail for email, the only apps I'd need under Linux in order to switch to it for desktop use would be a PHP IDE and some sort of media player, although obviously I'd still have to use Windows for gaming. So I think I'll install it properly (dual booting with XP for now), to have a proper look.

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Maximising browser windows

Posted 15:46, 19/4/2007, in Misc

456 Berea Street have posted the results of their recent survey "do you maximise your web browser window?"

Obviously screen resolution plays a big part in this. At work (where I have a dual screen 1280x1024 setup) my browser windows will always be maximised. Whereas at home (where I run in 1920x1200), maximised browser windows look ridiculous.

I can't help but throw in a quick moan about current operating systems here. It may be a few years now since I stopped using RISC OS, but the window management system is one of the things I miss most from it. In Windows, giving a window focus makes it immediately jump to the front of the stack, which makes it difficult to use multiple windows at once without craftily resizing them so they don't overlap. In RISC OS, windows only jump to the front of the stack when you click on the title bar. You can type into/resize/move windows around regardless of whether they're partially obscured by something else. This makes it much easier to work with multiple windows at once, e.g. to type some code into a maximised text editor window whilst referring to a list in a smaller window you have open.

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