Going Mobile

Posted on August 16th, 2007 by Jeff

I had to rebuild my old Transport ZX (stargazer1) laptop a couple of months ago when I had to replace the failed hard drive. I put XP on it instead of Win2K and though it’s a little slower that it was, all is fine. I’ve kept the install light — no MS Office, no Outlook, no VisualStudio, but what I do have is a complete Ruby development setup, Emacs, Firefox and the like.

I chose Instant Rails for this machine instead of my usual approach of installing ruby, then rubygems, et al. It’s a little odd to get used to, but it does it’s job quite well. I recommend it for those who want to give RoR a quick spin about the block. It’s well suited for following tutorials and screencasts found online.

The other largish piece of software I put stargazer is Ubuntu. It was the easist install of linux that I’ve ever done, and I’ve done quite a few, starting with SLS Linux that came on 26 5.25″ floppy disks. I have two gripes with Ubuntu.

  1. The option of how to install the bootloader is hidden from the user. Instead of installing into the linux partition and wiring itself into the XP boot menu, grub was installed in the MBR. I would have preferred that XP bootloader was used by default.
  2. I can’t install updates. Every time I try to update a package, the system complains that a file within the installed package is “missing a final newline”. There seems to be no cure for this. I used the same CD to install Ubuntu into a VMWare-based VM and THAT install went fine, and I don’t get that error. Updates install smoothly. Go figure.
  3. The vaunted apt can’t get the latest version of ruby, rails or emacs because they’re not packaged for 7.04 and I’m confused about how to install a gem. The ‘net is full of dire warnings about mixing install methods on an apt-based system2
Anyway, the upshot is that I can do mobile development now, and just in time. I spent most of the day working on a rails based app, henceforth known as PM. More details to follow in another post.

1. It’s called stargazer because I also use it to control my ETX-90 telescope
2. Yes, I know that’s three gripes. I’m having a buy-two get-one-free sale.

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