This was kind of neat. I grabbed an Ubuntu VMWare image, installed the AIR Alpha, and then installed AgileAgenda on it. It mostly worked, except for one crippling problem. For some reason the hotkey for “Save” was set to “S” instead of “Ctrl-S”… so you couldn’t type any task name with an “S” in it. I’ll have to look into that to see if it’s just an AIR Alpha bug, or if it’s a problem I need to fix with something I’m doing. I can’t wait for the full Linux AIR to come out, it’ll be a great way for Linux users to get applications.
One of the best things about AIR is it’s application distribution model. It’s just so darned easy for people to install apps. One of the worst things about Linux is application distribution. There’s just too many package formats and different ways to install. I really hope AIR can bring a single, simple, installation method for AIR apps to all of the popular distributions. Something that my wife could sit down at a Linux computer and do.
It’s been a while since I last ran Linux. I’ve been really reluctant to install on my new Dell desktop since I don’t have installation CD’s to fix it if things go horribly wrong. I’d really like to give Flash development a shot on an open source platform.
A while back I did some searching around and found a live CD including GParted / Clonezilla. I downloaded it and threw it on a CD.
Today, UPS brought me my new 250gb USB hard drive, so maybe it’s time to get into this.
Clonezilla is a Norton Ghost workalike. I was able to quickly create an image of my entire hard drive, including partition table, MBR, and those pesky DELL specific restore partitions. All in all it took maybe half an hour. Hopefully, this will give me a safe source to restore from in the event that I mess things up.
GParted is a Partition-Magic workalike. As I’m typing this blog post it’s resizing my Windows partition and moving the DELL restore partition. Then it’ll create a new partition for my Linux install and I’ll be ready to go.
When that’s finished, I’ll be installing KUbuntu for a linux distribution, and eventually Beryl, a nifty 3d-enabled windowing system.
With any luck, my next blog post will be made from my freshly installed linux system.
If things go horribly wrong, I’ll be making my posts on this Laptop until my desktop gets straightened up.
UPDATE - Windows still boots up after my partition resize! Repartitioning was my biggest fear of messing up things. On to the Linux install…
