Ubuntu 8.04 checkup, Part 1

I booted the Toshiba 1100-S101 with Ubuntu 8.04 for the first time in 25 days, according to the Update Manager. Or at least it was 25 days since I updated the install.

Either way, I've been running a nearly carbon copy of this laptop with OpenBSD 4.4, lately with the Xfce 4.4 desktop environment, and I'd gotten quite used to it. While I still had only Flash Player 7 through the Opera browser in OpenBSD, I did have the Java runtime installed, so I thought ... thought I could use all the Web-based applications I need to use that require Java. Thought.

Here I am, 10 p.m., working at home, and I discover that LogMeIn just doesn't like OpenBSD. Even in Linux, when you don't have Java you can still use LogMeIn. It's way, way, way better with Java, which is why I installed Java both in Ubuntu 8.04 and OpenBSD 4.4. My other Java-based applet I use, a fairly simple uploading mechanism (for which I could use FTP but the company I'm dealing with has it hooked up so images take forever to process when you FTP them but process immediately when you use the Java app ... so you can guess which one I've begrudgingly turned to), and that works fine with the Java in OpenBSD as well as in Ubuntu.

But LogMeIn ... oh, LogMeIn ... you piss me off. I set up, tested and used Java in Ubuntu 8.04 to control a remote Windows desktop with LogMeIn Free (and I'm announcing right here, right now, if I can get LogMeIn to work in OpenBSD, I will stop being a freeloader and buy your damn service ... but I'm not opening up my wallet just yet.

Anyhow, I'm merrily doing my work on the OpenBSD Toshiba laptop when I fire up LogMeIn in Firefox. I try to bring up my remote machine and I get a blank screen. It appears from my feeble attempts at figuring out the problem that LogMeIn is trying to use ActiveX even though I'm not running it on a Windows box or using Internet Explorer. LogMeIn doesn't need ActiveX. It doesn't even need Java (though, as I say, it's damn near unusable without it). Don't get me wrong, it works great from Windows box to Windows box with ActiveX. It's nearly as seamless with Java, and thus I have Java — with the express purpose being the enjoyment of said seamlessness.

But I had no LogMeIn. So I did my work, doing everything as best as I could. Then I booted into the Windows XP partition on my OpenBSD laptop. Yep, it came with Windows loaded, and I just shrunk the NTFS partition and slapped OpenBSD 4.4 on the newly freed half of the hard drive (and yes, dividing a 20 GB drive between XP and OpenBSD doesn't exactly give you a ton of room in either OS).

My XP partition even has Service Pack 3 and IE7. So I fired up IE, allowed it to install ActiveX (is it ActivX or ActiveX — 'e' or 'no e' ... I have no idea).

LogMeIn ran great in XP, I did my thing, turned off the laptop and went to bed at midnight.

The next day, which is right now, I pulled out the Ubuntu 8.04 Toshiba, cranked it on and tried out LogMeIn. Works great in Ubuntu with Java.

For the Ubuntu update, wait for the next entry ...