I've finally got around to installing Ubuntu Edgy on the iMac. Almost everything is working, the notable exception being audio. I've even managed to get XGL/Beryl running, which really spices up the desktop. In fact, I've never seen so much eye candy before, on any OS!
After a few minutes of apt-get installing, browsing, some svn checkouts etc... I started to notice something. This machine is _fast_. The whole user experience is so snappy that I can't feel any lag in the interface, even with some crazy Beryl effects enabled. (I love the burn effect, with maximum particles :-) It makes me wonder... what is OSX doing to make such a powerful machine run like treacle? The Dashboard? Spotlight?
One thing I miss already from my OSX setup, is the way MacPython installs packages into my home folder, rather than the usual /lib/python I've gotten used to. I'm sure there is a way to make this happen in Ubuntu. Anyone got any tips?
UPDATE:
I installed KDE for a laugh, and the audio started working. I loaded Gnome, the audio stayed working. I guess some system setting got tickled during the apt-get operations.
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3 comments:
Packages that come with a setup.py, can always be installed with the --home option, that will install things into ~/lib/python. You would need to set the PYTHONPATH variable to include ~/lib/python then to make this work. Setting per-user environment variables, so that they are present in the whole user session (not only in a bash in a terminal window) is a non-trivial task on Ubuntu, but you can set it easily system-wide in /etc/environment.
You can also have a ~/.pydistutils.cfg that sets the installation destination. Mine looks like:
[install]
prefix=/usr/local
[easy_install]
site-dirs=/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages
This would install third-party packages, which are installed with 'setup.py install' or with 'easy_install pkg' into /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages.
But there is also another way: whenever I want to set up a clean environment for a Python application that has only the packages installed that it needs, I create one with workingenv.py. You can find it in the Cheeseshop (http://python.org/pypi/workingenv.py).
It's really easy and works like a breeze!
Chris
Divmod's "Combinator" can do something like this, and although it should be switched to use the .pydistutils.cfg file (the way combinator interacts with 'setup.py install' is a dirty hack) it also sets up your PATH and PYTHONPATH to point to a standard home-directory installation location (~/.local) as well as a set of other paths, so you can use SVN checkouts of multiple simultaneous Python projects and they will all automatically show up in your path without having to be installed.
> I installed KDE for a laugh
It's good it amused you. Now, if you keep using it, you'll continue laughing, but for different reasons.
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