Testing the Gibbon

For one of my college projects, I needed to test the performance of a network protocol named SCTP. To do that, I set up three different Linux machines. One to host the server, the second one to host a client and the last one to emulate the Internet. In my previous work I became familiar with Ubuntu, and seeing that it is so newbie-friendly, I continued to use it. So I installed Ubuntu in the project's machines. First it was Edgy, and then Feisty -yes, I have been working in this college project from two years ago-.

So far it was working perfectly, but there were issues in some of my last tests. Someone advised me that maybe the Internet simulator (using NetEm) needed 1000hz interrupts enabled in the kernel. And that the kernel 2.6.22 supported that. As Ubuntu 7.10 came with that kernel, I decided to upgrade the machines to this latest distro.

My main machine has a nice graphics card, so I installed its restricted drivers, and then Ubuntu enabled Compiz-Fusion. And oh boy it looks good! Loving the dock and Exposé of the Mac computer I use for my thesis, I installed a dock and configured Compiz to show windows like Exposé. Also a enabled the cube desktop (and set four viewports) and made it a bit transparent, to see all viewports at the same time. I spent several hours playing with all available options, until I reached a configuration that I liked.. and it's so beautiful! As I mentioned in another post, I am very happy with my customized XP box, but maybe Linux will become my main OS in the near future. Keep the good work!