Lubuntu 12.10

Just did a fresh install of the 64-bit version of Lubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal), keeping the home directory from my previous 32-bit version of Lubuntu 12.04. Reason for switching to the 64-bit version is to run MATLAB R2012b and upcoming versions.

Main thing I have to remember to get my dual-boot (Windows 7 + GNU/Linux) system working is install GRUB to the root partition of the Linux system, then use EasyBCD in Windows to configure the Windows Boot Manager by adding an entry to boot to Linux with GRUB (Legacy).

[Note: I used the previous version EasyBCD 2.0 that was on my system and don't seem to be able to download the newer version now from Google Chrome. Suggested workarounds not involving EasyBCD for configuring the Windows Boot Manager welcome - I recall the last time I tried to control booting with GRUB on the Master Boot Record, Windows failed to load.]

Now to spend some time setting up the system, though it looks like everything mostly works!

Sylpheed Configuration

Just in case this is useful to anyone from Oxford or elsewhere using Sylpheed for emails and having trouble configuring it - I found that I had to choose the "LOGIN" method for authenticating IMAP and SMTP, as "Automatic" wasn't working for me.

Sylpheed is looking like a nice, snappy email program so far, and it runs fast and light on computing resources.

Lubuntu 12.04

Did a reinstall of Lubuntu on my laptop as something went wrong during the upgrade to 12.04 (codenamed Precise Pangolin). Just as well, since I have /home on a separate partition so didn't lose any of my data, just the tons of programs that I haven't used for ages. I'm sticking with Lubuntu because Ubuntu (at least version 11.10 of it) was too resource-hungry for my machine.

Instead of the GNOME Do launcher, I now use Kupfer. Very snappy.

Followed these instructions to install Dropbox. Had to install gcc to get it working. Then followed the instructions here to get Dropbox running automatically each time.

LXDE

Switched window manager to LXDE because the default Unity interface for ubuntu was getting really slow and possibly even somewhat buggy.

Love the fast performance! Blazingly quick and I should have done this long ago.

gNewSense

The gNewSense 2.3 LiveCD boots my computer into a working state, which is great. Unfortunately the Ethernet adapter doesn't work out of the box with my laptop, so that's a bummer.

According to the FAQ, the current version is based on Ubuntu, but the next version (3.0) will be based on Debian.

Hibernation

It's getting so cold in Oxford. And it's going to get colder.

On hibernation, somehow the upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 broke hibernation, which was working when I was using Ubuntu 11.04. Or perhaps it was from my fiddling with the fglrx driver for AMD graphics.

Got a message that there wasn't enough space, which was weird. Followed the instructions on making a new swap partition work for hibernate, and even tried to create a 10 GB swap partition, but was still being told that there wasn't enough memory! It only worked intermittently when I had freshly booted in.

Stumbled upon this forum thread which led me to the answer.

• Checked /var/log/syslog which showed that the hibernation image needed more pages than available in the swap partition. 
• The magic fix is "echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size", which was set at too high a value on my system. 
• As this value is reset across reboots, I embedded this line at the start of /usr/sbin/pm-hibernate.