I've been looking at computers again.

This is a bad idea, as I find all kinds of stuff that's awesome.

So yeah.

Lenovo is having a sale on their Thinkpads right now, and I've seen Thinkpads and I'm enamoured with them right now.  They look functional and simple and can hide a bunch of power inside.  The only bad thing?  I have to buy it with a bloody Windows license.

System 76 has a great desktop machine that I'm looking at, but their smallest laptop is 14" and that's a little big for a secondary couch-surfing system.  I just want something about 12" that will run Ubuntu and is (preferably) under $600.  It has to be portable and it has to fit in a bag and be easy to carry around to coffee shops and easy to take home for a weekend.  Also, battery life.  Please be more than 4 hours on a charge...

I think I've got a pipe dream here.  ZaReason has an awesome laptop that's 13" and has a lot of the things I want, but it's closer to $800.

I don't know exactly what to do, but I'll figure something out.  I'm not planning on pulling the trigger on any of these systems til well after the new year... closer to March maybe.  

You might be asking what I'm looking for in a desktop...  Well, here we go:

• At least an i5 processor.
• 6-8 gb of RAM.
• 500+ gb hard drive.
• nVidia card... 1 gb thing that's on S76.  I don't know what it's called.
• Decent cooling.
• Low power usage.

Same with a laptop:

• Battery life; at least 4-8 hours worth.
• 12" screen is optimal; I'll go to 13" or 11" if I have to.
• Decent keyboard.
• 2-4 gb of RAM.
• 100+ GB hard drive.
• i3 processor (or equilivent).
• 3 USB ports.

Both of the machines MUST be able to run Ubuntu with MINIMUM of fuss.  If I have to fight with it, I don't want any part of dealing with it.  The desktop must run Windows 7 as a secondary OS with minimum of fuss.

I just want my stuff to work without a problem.  An OS shouldn't get in my way of what I want to do, and both Ubuntu and Windows 7 are at those points.

Maybe I'm picky.  Who knows.

So.

Yeah.

nVidia is trying to make me die from crazy antics to make it work.

I reinstalled.  I was still having an xorg-being-eaten issue, so I started fiddling with the settings (again) and did the following:

• Turned off "Sync to VBlank" (In the OpenGL Settings)
• Turned off "Allow Flipping" (In the OpenGL Settings)
• Change the "Image Settings" to "Performance"... the slider will be about 2 notches down from the last "Quality" (In the OpenGL Settings)
• Turn off "Sync to VBlank" in the X Server XVideo Settings
• Make sure the PowerMizer settings are on "Adaptive"

Now, I think part of my heat issue is the fact that it's insanely hot here (90F) and our A/C is barely keeping up with removing the humidity from the air.  But, with these changes, I'm running Unity with no problems, and my system performance applet (SysPeek) is not bouncing up to the "red zone".  This is good.

So, I'm not running my preferred dual-head setup, but that's ok, because my actual monitor space is decent (1680x1050).  Also, I feel more focused on what I'm working on with the one screen.  Oh, and I still have 4 workspaces, so it's easy to separate my tasks out (browsing and writing on #1, microblogging/chat/irc on #2, and audio/video on #3.  Number four is my free workspace.).

I'm sticking with this setup.  I've finally got it working, with minimal visual degradation to my games (mainly SuperTuxCart).  Also, I have increased desk space due to not having a second monitor.

I'm so looking forward to Oneiric and hopefully this issue with nVidia will be fixed.  2012 will be bringing Wayland, and I'm not relishing the changeover and the problems that will surely ensue.

All right.

So, I'm sure everyone who reads this blog (or at least the ones I haven't scared off yet) know I've been having issues with my nVidia drivers.  I was using the nouveau drivers, which is fine, but they have a bad "blocking" effect with embedded flash videos.  Also, I didn't think I was getting full 3D acceleration.

When I ran the nVidia drivers, Xorg would peg my CPU between 10 minutes and 3 hours.  "top" would show xorg taking up all of my CPU; compiz wasn't far behind.

I don't understand why this is happening, but I just know that it is happening.

So, I was doing some searching on the Ubuntu Forums (which is hit-or-miss regarding issues) and found this thread.

I tried the commands in comment #19:

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
sudo nvidia-settings

I saved the xorg, rebooted, added my external monitor, and configured it (along with the gamma).

I seem to have a working setup right now...  Let's hope it holds for awhile.

So.  I was having loads of issues with my Ubuntu install.  It was acting up; slowing down, crashing on reboot (which I don't understand), and some other randomness.  I did a reinstall, went through my software, and decided that I didn't really need to run the daily of Gwibber, the beta of firefox, or the newest Banshee.

So, I stopped using those PPAs.  I still love PPAs, don't get me wrong, but I guess I wanted stuff to just work and not crash.  Gwibber is finally at the point where it does what I need it to without being a huge memory suck.  I'm using a bunch of PPAs, but the software is not provided in Ubuntu (like the weather indicator I'm using).

I thought maybe some of my issues were related to the alpha/beta software I was running, but I guess it was from the holdover from the cruft I was carrying around from Maverick.  I grabbed all of my files (NOT my hidden files) from my /home, copied them to my external drive, then reinstalled.  I blew away my /home too, and then restored all my files and reinstalled all my software.

Well it seems like it's fixed now.  No crashing, no slowdowns, and no unexpected shutdowns when I'm doing something else.

How about a screenshot?  Don't mind if I do:

As you can see, I have conky running on the right.  Pretty sweet.

The conky file, if anyone wants it can be found here.  You'll have to change the names of your drives and all that, but it's pretty simple.  For the record, I grabbed the original from ebupof from deviantart here.  I did some modification, but it's not all that different.

Back to two monitors, because I can't seem to live with only one.  I'm spoiled.

The netbook got a conky setup too:

You can find the conkyrc here.  I've already done some changes; I moved it over to the left, but that's easy enough to change.

Conky is fun to play around with.  Give it a shot.  I like messing with it, and since Ubuntu doesn't have panel applets anymore, this seems to be the way to go.