You can install it by downloading from SourceForge using the commands below:

cd
mkdir source
cd source
wget http://softlayer.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/hydrogen/hydrogen_0.9.4rc1_i386.intrepid.deb
dpkg -i hydrogen_0.9.4rc1_i386.intrepid.deb


Of note, is more use of Qt4 elements with less eye candy on the skins, and questionably easier to interpret. I kind of feel it clashes, but the Instrument and drum kit editor have been combined. It means one less place to find things, and that is progress.

Hydrogen drum computer software running on Ubuntu Linux

My setup is quite flexible. I’ve got two desktops and one laptop sharing one monitor. The two desktops are connected via KVM to a display. That display has two inputs, so my laptop is also connected to the same monitor as an extended desktop. I have two methods of selecting inputs to the monitor : a button on the front and the KVM control via keyboard.

This kind of flexibility really speeds up and streamlines my music production and progress on Sample Of The Day. I am able to be blogging and editing audio on one display, while on the other I can have Propellerhead’s Reason making loops and free audio samples using the software synthesizers.

To my surprise, I found that Xming was specifically suited to my needs. It acts as an X11 server, allowing me to use it to display my X11 applications that I have forwarded through SSH. It works perfectly.

It took a little time for setting up, but if you have got PuTTY installed and working, sixty percent of the work is already done.

Below is a screen shot that shows my running Windows Vista desktop, programming in Quanta which is actually hosted on a server called A. This is connected through an SSH tunnel from my laptop to my C server using the Putty client. From the C server, I launch the Quanta program using another SSH connection to the A server. It looks just like the Quanta program is a native windows app on the local Windows Vista desktop. You’ll also notice I’ve got an xterm session open connected to server A in the background.

My greatest pleasant surprise of installing KDE, was the improved performance. The core system seems extremely refined, fast, and immediately responsive.

Sometimes it’s so frustrating that I almost want to give up and logout and switch to the KDE 3.5 session, but instead I hop on IRC in Konversation and look for help in one of the channels. So far, it’s been an experience. Somewhat of a struggle, but I think I’ll keep trying.

Now… first things first. I setup the notebook using Vista and made sure that everything worked. Fortunately, everything worked… and worked perfectly.

Next, I moved into using GParted/CloneZilla from their LiveCD so that I can resize the NTFS partition. At first when I opened it, I noticed that it had a couple of partitions, including a recovery partition, the OS partition, and two others that I was uncertain of their purpose. It’s my first Dell, so I left those alone for now.

I resized the largest partition, the one used by Windows, so that I would have enough free room to support Ubuntu and all my desired files. I rebooted and attempted to let Vista load. Windows Vista noticed something had changed and spent the next 25 minutes checking integrity. It then allowed me to proceed to log in and everything again worked as expected.

I rebooted to use the GParted LiveCD again, this time with the intention of creating my desired partitions and this is where the problem began. I was unable to create any additional partitions because Dell had created all 4 partitions as Primary partitions, and that’s the limit. I opted to delete the last partition on the drive for convenience. The unallocated space was before this partition, so it just made the most since and required the least amount of data to be moved. I later found out this partition held the wonderful MediaDirect 3.0 software, that must be reinstalled prior to any OS.

I put the Hardy Heron Alpha1 disk in the tray, rebooted, and allowed it to install. I could not let it use a guided setup because I wanted /home on a separate partition. I also chose to put /etc on it’s own separate partition, and the Install program let me do it.

After rebooting, on the Ubuntu loading screen with the sliding orange progress bar, my caps lock and scroll lock lights begin to blink/flash. I rebooted and chose the Recovery mode from GRUB. This time, I see where it stops and it shows this error:

init: error parsing configuartions no such file or directory.

After searching the internet for reports of bugs with the flashing lights, I found a bunch of irrelevant stuff. Searching for the specific error message, I found the problem in a this bug report on Launchpad.

I re-installed and put /etc on the same partition as / and it now boots properly into Hardy Heron.

It seems that /etc can’t be on it’s own partition. Who knew? Not me. Not the install program. To me, it’s a bug that it wasn’t able to tell me : DO NOT install /etc on a separate partition.

Now that it boots, my next step is to get the wireless and audio working.

I tried Azureus, and it ate more and more and more RAM.

I was happy when i switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu, mostly because of the inclusion of kTorrent. While kTorrent is not on the whitelist of acceptable clients at some of my favorite trackers, it conveniently has an integrated interface where all torrents are easily available through one window in the same view. Compared to BitTornado, this is a relief for those like me who desire an easy to manage (note, not understand, but manage) interface.

A sophisticated plug-in interface for expandability provides a range of extensions created by open source developers. It already comes with several plug-ins, and many of the features I discuss will be implemented through a plug-in, for example the interface for UPnP connectivity is through an included plug-in.

Of note, I appreciate the UPnP support. This helps eliminate the messy configuration and hassle of adjusting a firewall/router.

It also allows us to schedule bandwidth limits, much the same way uTorrent does. This again is through a plug-in. It also provides a lo-fi version for systems with limited video capabilities. This is definitely something I use, just because of simplicity.
Another feature I haven not found as useful has been the integrated search engine. I have been disappointed with the implementation of this feature in torrent clients in the past, so I was interested in trying this. It works moderately well. I have not been able to browse to next pages of results when using the integrated browser, but it forces me to be more precise in my searches. Since I am capable of using a browser on my own, I have forgone attempting to use the external browser integration. Please leave me a comment and describe your experience with this, because if it works better I would be willing to try it.

We are able to manage our torrents in kTorrent from any web-enabled computer in the world via WebInterface. I use this for checking the status from my laptop. This is convenient when I don’t have a remote desktop connection open and quickly want to view my queue and statistics.

Because I take other precautions, the Integrated black list manager I have skipped using. I am not for certain why it needs duplicated here, because if this is your only protection, it applies to kTorrent only, and really lacks in effectiveness. For those that choose to use it, it does support wild cards. Otherwise it supports the use of two ipfilter list file formats.

I believe kTorrent will be a regular in my peer to peer tool box, but the client is only as good as what the tracker supports, which makes me need to use something else from time to time.

Konqueror, in my opinion, is the best file manager on any platform. If you’re new to my blog, I’ve written about Konqueror before. While it lacks Breadcrumb Navigation, it’s more capable in regards to other features. It’s a tabbed environment, with the ability to split panes vertically and horizontally, multiple times. We’re able to integrate shell scripts, so the possibilities are virtually endless. You’re able to configure a background image. It includes an excellent web browser.

Katapult is an awesome shortcut launcher. This is an example of where the open-source community is ahead. Katapult provides quick access to shortcuts, applications on the KMenu, and others through “plugins”. To activate, you press a key combination (default is Alt+Space) and you’ll see the slingshot logo. Start typing a couple of characters and Katapult finds the closest relevant application, bookmark, etc. Complete the launch by pressing Enter. This is much quicker than using Alt+F1 and the arrow keys to navigate. It’s also more flexible and quicker than using the run dialog.

Konversation is another leap of technology past mainstream commercial personal operating systems. While Instant Messaging clients have come a long way over the past decade, IRC is still the king of chat, and few software packages surpass Konversation in the way of capabilities. It’s also important to newcomers of Kubuntu, because it provides immediate, direct access to the official chat, where the community is able to really provide instant support. I’ve used it many times and I’ve always been able to find someone willing to help me get going in the right direction when trying to solve my problem. It doesn’t have all of the instant messaging capabilities, but it’s direct link to instant help and free technical support earns it’s high ranking here.

kTorrent also holds no equal in Windows XP (or Vista I believe). Instead, you’re stuck to the demise of the single threaded transfer of Internet Exploder. If you’re not familiar yet with torrents, you should take the time to consider some of the free and open source torrents available at Jamendo while you’re testing out kTorrent.

SpeedCrunch also fills the gap where CALC.EXE fails to put processing power to work. SpeedCrunch’s view is more informative and input options are more diverse. It provides a running history of the calculations and provides user defined variables.

Kontact is THE free PIM and Mail client I choose to stick with. Many other applications integrate to Kontact which make it truly exceptional. It expertly handles my mail (IMAP mostly), my calendars, groupware connections, to do, notes, RSS feeds, etc. To achieve similar capabilities, you can spend several hundreds of dollars. It does everything.

Kaffeine is a stand up media player. This awesome KDE media player supports visualizations, plugins, it’s got it all. It plays mp3, wma, ogg, avi, etc. The program allows us to create media playlists. The integrated screen shot capture system is just a toolbar away.

Kopete is an awesome instant messaging client. It supports Jabber, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GMail/XMPP, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, and many others. There are many messenger clients, but Kopete is so complete I’m not compelled to use anything else. While you can use Kopete for IRC, it’s just not flexible enough for an experienced IRC user to consider it higher in the ranking.

Kate is another Text Editor… but not just any. She’s very configurable and is powerful enough for use by developers. She’s particularly adept at helping change all of your configuration files. She’s not as fast or light as some of the alternatives, but the system has no competitive alternative when it comes to robustness.

k3b is by far superior to GnomeBaker. It allows the user to create DVD’s, audio CD’s, data DVD and CD’s, as well as VCD’s. It can create audio CD’s directly from MP3 with the addition of a plug in. It also directly burns and creates ISO image files of all formats.

Akregator will be my 11th and bonus application for this list. It integrates nicely with Kontact so you can easily access your feeds from your favorite PIM. Can’t beat that really.

Keep is one you can’t live without, so it’s the P.S. Bonus. It’s a backup manager allowing the user to specify the source and destinations of the backups, and scheduling the automated intervals. Another feature I enjoy is the ability to compress the backup. This works especially well for backing up /etc/ which contains many text files.

All was fine until Windows said “ENOUGH!” and bit the dust. I started out by getting the ominous sounding “Error 13 : Invalid or unsupported executable format” from GRUB. I wasn’t able to mount the partition in Kubuntu so I’m unable to retrieve any files from it.

I’ve tried using the Windows disk to boot to the recovery console. From that, I used fixmbr and it still didnt work. I used the great program Super GRUB disk to restore GRUB. Unfortunately, Windows still did not boot. What finally fixed it, was using FIXBOOT from the recovery console in Windows XP.

What an ordeal.