Ubuntu 18.04 Update

Some things I've found regarding some of the issues.  On the network, it seems that r8168 is broken in Ubuntu 18.04.  Check the issues here and here.  I'll investigate solutions for this.

This was a router issue with my MAC Address filters.  Silly me banned my own laptop from using the router.

On the SMB issue, I managed to connect using cifs.  Here's my command-line mount:

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=guest,guest,vers=1.0 //router_ip/share /home/user/mountpoint

At least I am now able to connect and transfer stuff to the router's external drive.  I had similar issues with Linux Mint Rebecca (17.1) and the solution was to roll back to version I had back in 2016 (4.3.9).

Random Thoughts: PhD, Ubuntu, and Netbooks!

I've been way too busy to post anything on the blog but at the very least, one post for 2018 means this is still alive.

PhDCS is hard work.  Hard work remembering what Computer Science was like a long time ago, but I appreciate the course I've taken for the most part.

My current laptop is an Acer Aspire VX15.  It's wonderful and beefy in terms of performance but the latest Ubuntu is truly a shit sandwich.  I have done upgrades using Ubuntu with little issues.  My Acer had a fresh install of 16.04 LTS back when my laptop was new (Bye Windows 10!) and the upgrade to 18.04.1 was nothing short of a complete disaster.  I knew Canonical had put in big changes on the latest LTS with the trashing of Unity (sad) for Gnome 3 but I didn't expect it to break so many things.

• I can't run the update because it renders my laptop unable to boot which means I've got to do some voodoo with UEFI, boot and somehow luck myself into fixing the boot sequence / grub.
• I can't boot from DVD or USB to reinstall Ubuntu.
• LAN port seems unable to get an IP address anymore.
• Wi-Fi sucks now as there are hotspots that it won't connect to for some reason.
• Gnome 3, in general, is an unsatisfying desktop.  I really liked Unity and how everything was straightforward intuitive for me.  I'll live though and so, this is the least of my problems.

I'm hoping a full reinstall of Ubuntu 18.04 will fix my woes but seeing as I'm unable to get the install media to even boot.  I don't know how I'm going to fix all of this.  In due time, I hope to sit down and really dive into this thing.  In terms of data, since /home is in a different partition, I don't have to worry that much about that.  It's just the booting that is suuuuuuuuuch a pain.

Last thing on my mind is that I'm looking into getting a 7" or 8" Windows (gasp!) laptop for variety.  My Acer is going to be my primary workhorse but the truly portable machine is appealing to me.  I've seen GPD Pocket (and 2), One Mix (and 2S) Yoga, and Topjoy Falcon and all of them seem really nice buys.  Weakest one seems to be the One Mix Yoga but the 2S incarnation seems really slick.

Well, cheers till the next update (whenever that is).