Death of the P4 Ubuntu desktop

My main computer, an old P4 desktop has finally died for the last time. It's been slowly failing me over the past year, with various parts being replaced, but yesterday it finally quit for good. The motherboard is fried and I won't bother repairing it. I'll be looking for a new system in the new year, so I'll have to get by with my trusty laptop. It's currently running Ubuntu Intrepid, and the only glitch is that the lcd backlight is slowly fading away. I've already replaced the lcd inverter, and now the backlight goes dim ever so often. I just have to partially close and open the laptop cover for the screen to come back on.
My desktop has 2 hard drives on it that I'll need to salvage before I get rid of it. I'll need to do full backups of both and reformat them to make sure there's no longer any personal data on them.
I was running Ubuntu on the one hard drive for quite some time now, and had it configured just right with everything running smoothly on it. I used the laptop to experiment with and to tweak settings. I'm using the laptop to log in to my blog via scribefire to post this update.
I'm glad that I discovered a great Firefox addon called Foxmarks that has allowed me to import my saved bookmarks to my laptop. I wish that I had done something similar with my passwords. I did use keepass on my computer, but unfortunately, I didn't save the backup file to a disk, so I can't access that yet. I may pick up a cheap hard drive enclosure kit so I'll be able to get at those files on my hard drive.
I'd suggest that anyone with personal files on their computer to not wait till 'tomorrow' to perform a backup. Those photos and documents can be gone in a flash, lost forever. Luckily for me, I can still access my files, but it may be a while till I can plug those drives in and backup my precious data.
Technorati Tags: ubuntu, ubucrates, p4 desktop, backup, foxmarks,

Recipe for Success

This month saw me in hospital for an unscheduled surgery. If you've never experienced a gall bladder attack before, I can only describe it as an incredibly painful experience I would never want to repeat.
Now that I'm out of hospital, I've decided to start eating a bit more healthier to avoid another hospital stay.
I've found an excellent program called Gourmet Recipe Manager that will help me achieve that.
This program has everything I'd want in a recipe storage program with more added features as well.
Gourmet allows me to import recipes from various other programs like MasterCook and Mealmaster. I used to use MasterCook with windows and have lots of recipes stored in that format, so it's great to see the import feature implemented and working well.
There is even an added bonus feature that allows you to import webpage recipes. This is an excellent feature that gives you the option to import the recipes directly from the website that you find it on. I didn't have much luck with this way of importing and found it hit and miss most of the time. Too bad, but this software is still evolving, so I'll be keeping an eye on this addon.
There are additional options that allow me to monitor nutritional data on each item and menu so that I can keep track of calories and individual stats of each item. I can customize the data by choosing from several menu options to help me fine tune the accuracy of the nutritional data being listed for each recipe.
There is also a handy shopping helper that lists items already on hand in your pantry and those items that I need to pick up on my next trip to the store. I just open up the shopping helper and drag and drop the items I already have to remove them from the list then hit print and I have a handy shopping list ready to take with me on my next shopping trip.
Adding new recipes is a breeze. Just enter each item one by one as well as the ingredient measurement and the recipe will soon be entered into the database. A photo can also be included to help make choosing recipes later.
Once your recipe database has started to grow ,there is a search feature that helps you track down to elusive recipes with options to search by title, category, cuisine, ingredient or even instructions. You can rate each recipe as well on a 5 star basis, so that you can even search for your favorites this way.
If you don't feel like typing in all your recipes by hand, and want to get started right away, do a google search for Mealmaster recipes. There are tons of recipes already online, so start those that download, import and start cooking.

Getting things done...one day soon

I've been so extremely busy this past month, that I've let this blog sit idle.
Here's a brief update of what I'm up to and what I'm thinking about for the future. I'm still using Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop, which is running extremely well and I haven't encountered any glitches at all. Tomorrow is the day of the final release.
Download and enjoy!
I'm debating making the switch from 8.04 to 8.10 on my desktop computer. I don't want to risk breaking anything and losing the data I've got stored there. I'll eventually attempt it when I've got time to do a thorough backup.
There are a few ideas and projects that I want to accomplish with Ubuntu in the near future.
I have some high definition video archived on my hard drive that I want to convert and burn to DVD one of these days. I'm not sure how easy this will be since the hi def video format is still relatively new and not so easily recognized by main stream players/editors.
I also would like to scan the transparency slides that I have stored all around my house that I took before I made the switch to digital. I'll have to reconnect my old slide scanner and capture them at the best resolution that I can for backup and for future use.
I'm working on a website for my daughters soccer team and am testing out the various html editors available in the repositories such as screem, quanta and bluefish.
Also, I'm debating taking FreeBSD out for a test drive as a friend doesn't stop taking about it. Sounds interesting and I've downloaded the iso files, but I'm still having fun with Ubuntu for now.

Happy Birthday Tux!

On October 20th Ubuntu will celebrate the 4rth anniversary of its initial release.
This month also marks the 17th anniversary of Linux. These are two small milestones, but I thought it was worth acknowledging them regardless.
This post gives me a chance to have some fun with using Gimp. I've created a simple graphic of Tux celebrating both events by hosting his own party where he spins his favorite Linux tunes. Not the best graphic that you'd be able to create using Gimp, but I'm far from being the artistic type.

Countdown to Eight-ten

 

The month is flying by quickly and it won't be long before the next version of Ubuntu will be released.
It's currently available as a beta, and I did test out Ubuntu when it was still in alpha release.
Currently, I have the Kubuntu 8.10 amd64 beta running on my laptop.
I've never been too fond of Kubuntu or KDE in the past, but I've got some new respect for this new and updated version of KDE. It really makes me seriously consider switching over to Kubuntu for the next release.
I never felt completely comfortable with previous versions of Kubuntu. Maybe at the time, I expected it to look and run more like Windows. I was told that it was more "Windows-like" than Gnome.
The new version using KDE 4.1 really impresses on first bootup. Although still in beta, the interface is very pleasing and is easily navigated. I would have prefered to see Firefox as the default browser rather than Konqueror and Thunderbird rather than Kmail, but those are personal options and easily installable.
I suspect that there will be many Ubuntu users making a permanent switch to Kubuntu once the word starts spreading about this release.

Firefox 303

When I installed the Alpha version of Intrepid on my laptop, I noticed that Firefox 3.02 came installed with it. It was nice to see that it was included as my Ubuntu desktop still had vr 3.01 on it and no official updates were available.
Today I find that Ubuntu has several updates available, and Firefox is one of them. However, I find that they have upgraded Firefox again, which brings it up to version 3.03. That's two updates in a short time.
It turns out that this update fixes a bug that was present in version 3.02, where "users were unable to retrieve saved passwords or save new passwords".

There has been a bit of controversy within the Ubuntu community lately about the Firefox user agreement and upcoming Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex due for release next month.
Mozilla has added a Firefox 3.0.2 end user license agreement (EULA) to its upcoming release, which has caused an uproar among many open source supporters.
Mark Shuttleworth explained the reasoning for this where users had started a bug entry for this EULA license "bug"

He writes:

Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to call the browser Firefox. Since Firefox is their trademark, which we intend to respect, we have the choice of working with Mozilla to meet their requirements, or switching to an unbranded browser.

It's strongly our preference, and that of most of our users, to have Firefox as the browser in Ubuntu.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for Mozilla to have requirements and guidelines for the use of their trademark - we have the same for Ubuntu, and many other free software projects do the same. I would in fact consider it a best practice to have a good brand on a free software project, which means having trademark guidelines.

That said, I would not consider an EULA as a best practice. It's unfortunate that Mozilla feels this is absolutely necessary, but they do, and none of us are in a position to be experts about the legal constraints which Mozilla feels apply to them. We had extensive conversations with Mozilla in order to find the best possible way of meeting their requirements while preserving the flow of use of the system for our users.

I am somewhat frightened that Mozilla would require a EULA which is so
waffly and contains so little substance. I also fail to see how not
carrying Firefox branding breaks "the flow of use of the system". Recall
that much of the world uses Internet Explorer, and doesn't know of the
Firefox brand in the first place.

This EULA also says strange things - that other packages might have
other licenses, for example. Why is it saying that? No other package
states that. Does it perhaps refer to the Firefox installer that we've
never used and never will? The agreement also states that portions of
the source code are available - if it is in main it must all be
available. Many parts of this EULA seem irrelevant and unnecessarily
frightening.

I'm not sure how this will end, but I don't think that this will change the way that people use Ubuntu. Firefox with or without a EULA agreement will still be the browser of choice for many users. It may be rebranded with a new name, but people will still choose it over the other alternatives that are currently available.

Alpha testing: Ubuntu Intrepid

This past Monday was Ubuntu Testing Day, and Ubuntu users were asked to download and test any one of the flavours of Intrepid that is currently in Alpha 6 testing.
I finally decided to try the amd64 version of Ubuntu on my laptop, which I have been meaning to try since I purchased it (Compaq Presario V2310).
I downloaded and burned the iso and proceeded to install the Ubuntu Intrepid alpha 6 image to my laptop. I have participated in many, many beta testing versions of various softwares over the years, but this is the first time that I have installed an alpha test version for testing purposes.
I decided that since this was an alpha test, I would completely erase my laptop hard drive and devote the entire machine to the testing process in case any serious problems wiped out my data.
I registered with the testing site and installed the Ubuntu DVD amd64 version of Intrepid.
I noted that there were many bugs listed for the various versions of Ubuntu, but I found that my install went flawlessly and I was up in running in no time after my hard drive was formated and partitioned.
The only glitch I encountered was entirely expected on my Compaq Presario V2310.
This laptop has wifi issues that I've found can only be rectified by applying the Fiesty No Fluff broadcom fix. Not a serious problem and not what I'd call a bug, but it would have been nice to have the software work right 'out of the box'.
I've been trying this version out the last few days and have not encountered any significant issues to report. I'm now planning on trying out one of the other alpha versions of Intrepid. I notice that the both desktop versions of the alpha have multiple bugs reported, so I think I'd like to try help iron out some bugs with those installations.
The beta version will be released on October 2nd, the RC on October 23 and the final release will be on October 30th.
Those that want to try out the next final version of Intrepid don't have long to wait, otherwise jump in now and try out the alpha. Just don't forget to backup your important data first.

Do the Samba

I often edit and open files from Gnome Nautilus file manager for simplicity sake. I usually open it via the terminal window. However, just typing in 'nautilus' has always given me this message just before it would open:

** (nautilus:18315): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Operation not supported
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.

There is a simple fix to removing this prompt and allowing nautilus to open even faster. At least it does for me.

sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

Head over to the Samba documentation page for more info on what Samba can do for you.

Samba can be used to:

• Act as a server for Windows (or Samba) clients: share folders and printers, including PDF pseudo-printers so all the computers in your network may write PDF files
• Act as a domain controller in a Windows network (authenticating users, etc.)
• Do some more complex things, such as using a Windows domain controller to authenticate the users of a Linux/UNIX machine

Reformatting my brain

Today I tried to do a very simple task using Ubuntu. I had purchased a new compact flash media card and I wanted to format it as well as my old ones to bring them back to original condition. I popped them into the media bay of my computer and attempted to run a simple reformat command on them from nautilus. I then realized that the reformat command was a reflex of my using Windows/msdos for so many years and that I'd have to try a new approach.

A simple task required a short search, which brought me to a simple solution.

First: Install gparted, either from synaptic or the Ubuntu package download page
Second: Run gparted and find the media card. Mine was listed as /dev/sdc. Unmount the drive.
Third: Choose Partition>Format to: There will be a list of choices for how you prefer to format the card from FAT16/ FAT32 to ext2 and linux-swap.

I formatted my compact flash to FAT 32 and it works well in my PDA.

I then decided to change the name of the card as I didn't like the default name it had. Another "simple solution" that I discovered. I couldn't just right click on the media card and rename it. I did find a way to accomplish it though.

1: Install mtools from synaptic.
2: Open a terminal window and sudo su to become root.
3: Unmount the card with the 'umount' command
4: Run the command that will rename the drive using mlabel -i /dev/sdc1 ::AximCF
(The drive on my PC is /dev/sdc1)
5: Remove the media from PC and reconnect it to see the new name, and take joy in the fact that the simple tasks make life worth living.


NBC hates linux

This post has more to do with the Olympics that started yesterday, than it does Linux.
I watched the Olympic opening ceremonies yesterday in glorious hi def on my TV, and then logged on to see what was available online. Two networks, NBC in the US and CBC here in Canada both have live Olympic coverage online.
(edit: read note at the bottom of post before trying to watch these videos)
I was able to watch the live proceedings without any problem via the CBC link

NBC online coverage was another matter altogether. It seems that their feed does not support Linux at all.

Shame on you NBC.
Although I shouldn't be too surprised.
While CBC was covering the event live, NBC only showed a rebroadcast of the opening ceremonies late in the evening. Also, I may sound biased, but I feel that CBC did a much better job with the video broadcast coverage than NBC. So with that in mind, I don't feel so bad for not being able to view NBC online.

All aboard!

I came across an interesting game today that reminds me of similar games that I enjoyed playing years ago, such as Transport Tycoon and Simcity. The game is called SimuTrans. They have just come out with version 1.0 this week and it looks like it's ready for prime time. It's a game that allows you to build a transportation network and move industrial goods which will allow raw materials to be used to produce other raw materials. All these goods need to be kept moving otherwise your town will not have cars to drive, for example, or gas to power them.

Downloads are available from the sourceforge site, but if you're not sure which files to grab or in what order to download them, just head over to the Ubuntu Packages site and do a search for simutrans using Intrepid as the distribution. You will find 4 deb files that you can download and install. Install the pak64 and data files before the main program and start building your empire. It couldn't get any easier.

Working with Photos Part II

The Sourceforge summary for Album Shaper states that:
Album Shaper strives to be the most friendly, easy to use, cross platform application for organizing, annotating, framing, enhancing, stylizing, and sharing your digital photos.

As this was the first linux photo software that I took for a test drive, I can attest that the above statement is true.
Installation was incredibly simple via the deb file that is available for download from the album shaper sourceforge site. This is for the version 2.1.
Once up and running, creating a simple photo slideshow simply involves creating a collection folder to store your photos, then choosing the photos that you wish to add.
Once complete, you can choose to save your project and select from several templates for your webpage as well as the directory the collection will be saved to. Next step is to export the collection into a finished webpage ready for viewing or for uploading to a website to share with the world.
I've created a sample page with some photos from my recent Alaskan Cruise. Try not to fall asleep as you watch my boring home photo slideshow.
There is no autoplay feature unfortunately, so you'll need to advance through each photo/collection manually.
There is quite a bit more that this program can do that I did not explore or work into my slideshow demo. You also have the ability to preview and edit photos, adjust brightness, contrast and tilt as well as annotate individual photos.
The Album Shaper site also includes to other programs Presenter and Reveal that both sound interesting, but that I haven't had a chance to try out yet.
All in all, Album Shaper is a great program that allows for a quick way to create a photo webpage without having to enroll at Harvard to figure out how it should work.

Working with Photos Part I

I've just returned from a great holiday and now I'm faced with the daunting task of sorting through the hundreds of photos and tons of video that I took while I was away. I brought my laptop while I was on holiday so that I could empty the camera memory card each day. I organized the photo files in a directory with a different folder for each day that I was away. This makes the process of sorting a little easier. It also makes remembering where I was and what I saw each day a little easier too! I also wanted to be able to back up my photos/AVIs by burning them to DVD in case something happened to the laptop, so I brought along some re-writable DVDs as well and burned a couple of DVDs using K3b.
Now that I'm home, I'd like to put the photos online for friends and family to view them. I used to do this quite a bit when I was still using Windows and two programs that I enjoyed using were Xatshow and Memories on TV.
I'm now searching around for Linux programs that can create similar type of online webshows.
I've found several linux programs that look interesting, but I haven't had a chance to fully exlore them yet. I'm planning to check each one out and I hope that they meet my expectations.
In the meantime, I've created a short slideshow of my cruise to Alaska. This was created with the freeware version of Xatshow. It's a Windows program that I've used for years and luckily, it runs just fine under Wine. If you've got Java installed then it should autoload after a short delay.

Enter the Time Machine

I grew up during the early years of computers and computer gaming. I remember the excitement I experienced when I first purchased Ultima VII to play on my IBM compatible 386 machine. I had already played through both Ultimas V and VI on that machine when it was still a 286. I had upgraded the motherboard in the meantime and I was eagerly awaiting the release of U7.
My computer was at the tail end of the recommended System requirements as the game recommended a 486 if I remember correctly, and I had a heck of a time getting it to run on that machine. It took a lot of tweaking and rebooting with a strange new memory manager called voodoo. I had to have a separate boot up configuration just to play the game, but it was entirely worth it. I got it working and to date, that was the best gaming experience I ever had. I was truly immersed in the story and gameplay. Soon after, I purchased Ultima Underworld, and it too was a great game that I enjoyed.
Now that I have Ubuntu, I've discovered that I can replay these classic games again, and without the headache of 'voodoo' magic and memory management woes.

Exult is an open source game engine that was designed to allow Ultima VII to be playable on todays systems. As long as you have the original Ultima VII game files, the installation is a piece of cake compared to the original installation anguish. I still have the original game box with the cloth map and small trinket stored in my basement game museum along with a lot of other games from that era.
There is another great program called Dosbox that can be found in the Ubuntu repositories that will allow you to play just about every other game from years gone by.

I'm going to post instructions on getting a system configured to run Dosbox with the least amount of fuss. I'd like to thank someone named xbmc who wrote these steps on the old PSUbuntuforums.

First thing that needs to be done is to install Dosbox.
Once installed open it via Applications > Games >Dosbox.

In the Dosbox window, type in the following command:

config -writeconf dosbox.conf

this will get your configuration file up and running.
Now close that window and open up the terminal program and type these commands in one at a time (you'll need to use your own username to replace mine:
/home/ubucrates/dosbox.conf mkdir /home/ubucrates/dosbox sudo cp /home/ubucrates/dosbox.conf /home/ubucrates/dosbox.conf.backup
Open up your configuration file with this command:
gedit /home/ubucrates/dosbox.conf

Add the following lines at the very end of the file and then Save:
mount c /home/ubucrates/dosbox C:

Now you only need to copy all your game files to the /home/ubucrates/dosbox folder and then launch Dosbox to start playing.
Once Dosbox loads you'll be looking at a C:/ prompt. If you're familiar with the old Dos commands then you'll know what to do. If not then you only need to know how to open the game folder and then type the game name to launch the game. Pressing Ctrl+F1 in Dosbox opens up the configuration window that will allow you to change many features of the game such as allowing shortcuts for various tweaks like having a fullscreen shortcut key.
I'm currently replaying another fun classic called Wolfenstein 3D.
I had fun tweaking Ubuntu to get these working and now I get a chance to rediscover some amazing titles from the early days of gaming.

Ubuntu and the auto update

The reason Ubuntu can be both fun and frustrating is that it offers a sharp learning curve at times.

I saw the nice little orange update star in the upper panel like I occasionally do, and clicked on it to do an auto update of my Compaq laptop. Everything went well, and I returned to work.
The next time I booted up my laptop, I saw a warning popup telling me that "Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode".
There was a setting for me to manually set up my monitor/video card, but the settings there were not the most user friendly. As I'm not sure which settings applied to my particular laptop, I cancelled the manual setup and continued on into a generic 800X600 desktop.
I determined the problem to be the latest install update. It seems that the update decided to include the fglrx envy files, which I did not previously have installed. That screwed up my graphics settings at bootup.
I simply used Synaptic Package Manager to completely uninstall those drivers and then rebooted. Everything went back to the way it was before.
Lesson to learn is that whenever doing an auto update, double check all the files that are selected to update and uncheck those that definately don't belong on your particular system.

wlassistant launcher command

I added a launcher icon in my top panel to access wlassistant, but have been not able to get access due to a window that pops up stating that I have insufficient permissions' to function properly and that I should run it as sudo.
I changed the command line to read "/usr/bin/su-to-root -X -c /usr/bin/wlassistant" which now opens the window without a password prompt.
I'm planning to reinstall Ubuntu from scratch on this laptop next month, when I return from holidays. I'm sure that getting wifi to work flawlessly on this laptop without all this tweaking is possible. I've got a 64 bit Ubuntu DVD that I want to try out as well.

Wifi working on my v2310

My laptop has been up and running Ubuntu for the last few days. As I mentioned in the previous post, the only real problem I had was getting my wifi to work consistently. It worked initially, however on rebooting/restarting the system, the laptop had trouble finding the wifi signal at times. I've followed the guide for installing drivers for Broadcom wifi cards, which helped, but rebooting killed wifi at times.
I've downloaded and tested several wifi apps that help me to get connected manually.
The two apps that I'm using now are kwifimanager along with wlassistant. The two of them guarantee wifi connection success, however I have to open them manually to get them to search the wifi signals and then connect to my preselected prefered network.
I have also tried the following programs that also work with various success.
Gtkwifi: great program that worked initially, but on rebooting I found that it wouldn't work on its own and it didn't play nice with the other wifi apps I tried to run along side it. I may give it another try in the future.
wifi-radar: this app may have worked for previous versions of Ubuntu, but the website is dead and I didn't spend much time with this one. It's still on my laptop, so I may play with trying to get it to work in the future.
Wicd: This program shows a lot of promise. To be honest, I found this after I got wlassistant working, so I haven't explored what this program can do or how well it works, but it's on my to-do list of things to try with Ubuntu.
There's also the preinstalled network manager called nm-applet that loads in the panel but it's very limited in what it can do. It also doesnt' seem to be able to find all the wifi networks in my area.
That's a brief summary of configuring my wifi on this laptop. Don't ask me why both of the apps that I'm using are KDE based and I'm running a Gnome desktop environment. I should be using one of the gtk apps but if it works I won't question it.

New laptop, new adventures

I recently bid for a laptop on Ebay and I won the auction. The laptop arrived this week, and today was the day I had time set aside to load Ubuntu on it. I'm going to set it up to dual boot with Windows, but I doubt that I'll log into Windows very often. I'll keep it for accessing my Dell Axim pda. I could probably do that from Windows, or even use the SD card reader to transfer files to it, but going to Windows to work with Activesync seems to be the least stressful way at the moment. Maybe PDA plug and play will work flawlessly in Ubuntu, but it's not there yet. I am partitioning the drive roughly 40% Windows and 60% Ubuntu as I write this from my desktop pc. The only minor problem that I anticipate at the moment is that the Broadcom wireless card may not work and I'll need to search for a compatible driver. The laptop is a Compag Presario V2310 AMD Turion 64. I have both the 32 bit and the 64 bit DVDs of Ubuntu, but I will be installing the 32 bit version for now but I plan to try the 64 bit flavour sometime in the future.

Fosswire offers a Cheat Sheet to Ubuntu Users

I discovered a great blog for open source software that offers tips and tutorials along with great articles. The posts cover all the linux distros and aren't Ubuntu specific, but I found such a useful pdf Ubuntu Reference Cheat Sheet that I had to post it here. If you're interested in even more Ubuntu posts on Fosswire, there's a search window right at the top of their page where you can search for whatever specific topic that might be of interest.

Laptop recovery

I finally managed to recover the laptop that was freezing when loading gnome. I found many links talking about this similar problem, and I'm not really sure why it happened in the first place.
Whatever the cause, I'm glad that I found a solution that has Ubuntu up and running again on the laptop.
I'll post the links here along with the solution that worked for me.
Fix 1:
/etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp

then restart networking with: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Fix 2
Blacklist ipv6

Fix 2 is what finally got things running for me again.
gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
add a line that reads:
blacklist ipv6
reboot

Another Ubuntu problem solved in Ubucrates Classroom.
Class dismissed.

testing moblog from pda

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Laptop down and out...revisited

I'm still trying to resolve this issue that my daughters' Ubuntu laptop is experiencing. If nothing else, I'd like to learn what caused this problem and what the simplest fix might be.
I've already discovered that if the computer is booted up and then left alone once it gets to the white rectangle, then eventually the computer will load Gnome, but it takes around 5 minutes. After that, Ubuntu is fully available for use but it suffers from terribly slow program load time speeds.
The online programs access the internet without any problems. It's just their loading times that is affected.
In doing a search for this problem, I've already found that this issue has been occuring for years now, but I have yet to find a definitive fix that will solve the slow bootup and slow program load times.
Arrrgghhhh, the joys of Ubuntu.

Laptop Ubuntu down and out

Yesterday marked a day of Ubuntu troubles. My daughter asked me to check her laptop, as she was unable to start Ubuntu today.
I tried to start her computer and found that the computer simply froze up once gnome was loaded. All that could be seen was a white square in the upper left corner of the screen overtop of the background colour. Try as I might, I couldn't get the computer to move past this freeze. I tried various fixes from the terminal via Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. I tried reloading/uninstalling/reinstalling gnome without success.
I then installed Kubuntu and was surprised to find that I could log in via Kubuntu, but if I tried to log in to Ubuntu, gnome would simply freeze and refuse to work.
So, kubuntu kde works but not ubuntu gnome. I have yet to find a fix for this.
The only change made to the laptop was the recent upgrade of Ubuntu 8.04.1 which I also installed on my desktop without any problems. Not sure if this change screwed things up.
I also made a change in my DNS settings on my desktop as I'm now using OpenDNS settings for internet connection.
Sadly, this problem has left me stumpted and I had no other alternative but to make Windows XP the default OS on the laptop until I can solve this. Kubuntu isn't running very well either or I would let that be the default. It's running very slow (Firefox takes ages to load) and the wifi connection doesn't always load forcing me to manually get it working. Not a good solution for a user that wants to just have everything work staight away like my daughter.
I so much wanted to steer her away from Microsoft and I was succeeding until this happened.
She's now back to surfing the net with XP, which is running very slowly on her old laptop, but at least she's able to get online.
Ah, the joys of Ubuntu.

Let Ubuntu speak to you

I discovered that Ubuntu has a built in speech synthesizer called espeak.

From the site http://espeak.sourceforge.net:

eSpeak is a compact open source software speech synthesizer for English and other languages, for Linux and Windows. http://espeak.sourceforge.net

eSpeak produces good quality English speech. It uses a different synthesis method from other open source TTS engines, and sounds quite different. It's perhaps not as natural or "smooth", but I find the articulation clearer and easier to listen to for long periods.

It can run as a command line program to speak text from a file or from stdin.

To test it out right now, open a terminal window and type in the following command:

espeak "Welcome to espeak, how may I help you?"

You can type whatever you like within the quotation marks, so have some fun.

If you'd rather a female voice, then enter this command:

espeak -v en+f4 "Welcome to espeak, how may I help you?"

The -v command allows for different languages. You can find more info on voices as well as all the other commands here:
espeak commands

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, ubucrates classroom, espeak, speech synthesizer,

The bugs in the Earth

I recently installed version 4.3 of Google Earth which is the latest beta version of this great software.
I always had this app on my computer when I was using Windows and never had a problem with it. It always ran smoothly, but the Ubuntu versions that I've tried have been very buggy.
I had installed version 4.2 to begin with, but the screen was always flickering and the globe was impossible to view. This bug hasn't changed for me with the new beta version release. I'm not sure why this is happening, since I don't read anything about this bug online.
I'll be exploring this in the hopes that I can correct it and begin enjoying my virtual globe trotting holiday.

Laptop wifi glitches

It's just over a week since I installed Ubuntu on my daughters laptop. She's been extremely happy with the speed increase of her Compaq Presario V2000. I left her the choice to use either Windows or Ubuntu as I created a dual boot system for her, but to date, she hasn't booted Windows up yet. She's been happy using the Linux software I installed. When I set her computer up, I took time to walk her through the differences between Windows and Ubuntu and what to expect. I explained all the software that she likes to use compared to its Windows equivalent. I gave her no less than 3 Instant Messaging programs to test drive to see which one she likes best. She's still trying each one out.
Lately, she's been finding that the Wifi signal doesn't load automatically on booting. I'm puzzled as to why this is. I noticed that one time it happened, I tried rebooting only to find the wifi unavailable again. It was only when I shut the laptop down and restarted that the wifi mysteriously came back on. I haven't spent much time yet to try and track down a reason or a fix for this just yet. I only hope that this doesn't totally discourage her from continuing on as a linux user.

Ubuntu gives birth at home

After having initial success with my desktop Ubuntu installation, I convinced my daughter to let me install Ubuntu on her laptop and set it up as a dual boot system. It was easy to do as her laptop was running Windows and was constantly having problems to which she would come to me for help.
The installation went well except for the major hurdle I had with trying to get the Wifi working on her Compaq Presario V2000. I'll explain what I did to get it working in another post.
All updates/upgrades are now installed and she is currently exploring the new environment. I told her to try everything so that she can see which software applications she prefers. I installed three IM clients, AMSN, Emesene, and Pidgin. There are also several music players for her to choose from. I'm trying to decide if I like Amarok, Rhythmbox or the new Banshee vr1.0, so I told her to try them all for herself to see which one she likes.
Today I enabled Network printing with a bit of help from the Ubuntu community help documentation. Very easy to get up and running with 2 Ubuntu machines. For some reason, I couldn't get it working with a remote Windows machine, but I didn't spend much time working on it at the time.
I'm pleased that we have two linux computers now in the home, and now I'm trying to convince my wife to allow me to install Ubuntu on her computer, but she'll need a bit more convincing that having another baby is a good idea.


Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, ubucrates classroom, printer sharing, laptop, compaq, presario, v2000,

Booting two separate hard drives

When I first installed Ubuntu, I made the decision to install it as a separate operating system on my second hard drive with it's own grub file so that it wouldn't mess with my Windows drive.
Installing version 8.04 was a very simple process. I simply unplugged my Windows drive and made the second hard drive the master drive. I then rebooted the computer with only the second drive connected and allowed the Ubuntu DVD to boot up and whereupon I installed ubuntu. Once it was installed, I removed the DVD and rebooted that drive. I left the Windows drive unplugged as I only wanted to use Ubuntu and get familiar with it. I installed updates, new software and hooked up my peripheral devices.
I plugged my Windows drive back in so that I can use it as a backup drive for my data. Since the grub/menu.lst file did not have any Windows boot information in it, I can always remove the Linux drive and move it to another computer if/when I upgrade and it will be a plug and play drive.
Recently, I wanted to be able to boot into either Ubuntu or Windows via the grub file. Sounds simple, but since Ubuntu was already installed, that meant editing the menu.lst file. This is simple enough to do, but most information online is for those who have installed ubuntu on their second drive with the grub file located on the windows drive. I had done things the other way around.
I need to add some lines to the menu.lst file to let the computer know that my Windows drive was the slave drive and that I wanted it to boot first and then load Windows instead of Ubuntu.
Here are the steps I took to make this all happen.

Load up the menu.lst file
gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Edit the file to include the following lines.

## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-18-generic

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-18-generic root=UUID=86e9f44e-08bb-470d-98f8-56023839f9c0 ro quiet splash

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-18-generic

quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-18-generic (recovery mode)

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-18-generic root=UUID=86e9f44e-08bb-470d-98f8-56023839f9c0 ro single

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-18-generic

(hd1) /dev/sdb

title Windows XP

root (hd1,0)

savedefault

makeactive

map (hd0) (hd1)

map (hd1) (hd0)

chainloader +1

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

I also changed the boot time and made the menu visible by changing the following lines as shown here:

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 5

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
#hiddenmenu

I wanted to be able to boot into windows without having to reach inside the computer and swap the drive cables to make it the master drive each time. I've tested my changes and it works well, but I have no desire to use Windows at the present time, but I can just choose it from the screen menu on bootup. If I simply turn on the computer and leave it, it will automatically boot into Ubuntu by default, which is just how I like it.

Installing the latest Nexuiz

I downloaded Nexuiz 2.42 today, version 2.41 can be found in the Ubuntu repositories, but I wanted the latest version.

Installing it required some steps that I wasn't familiar with as there isn't a 2.42 deb file, but I found a site with a step by step guide on installation here.
I'll document the steps here as well in case that site goes down and I need to refer to them again.

Download both the game and the Map Pack first.
Create a /.Games in your home directory and unzip the game files there. I used Nautilus to accomplish this but the link above shows terminal commands.

mkdir ~/.Games
cd ~/Desktop
unzip nexuiz-242.zip -d ~/.Games
unzip nexmappack_r2.zip -d ~/.Games/Nexuiz

Download the nexuiz.png icon. Run the following commands.
Nexiuz icon found here

cd ~/Desktop
mv nexuiz.png ~/.Games/Nexuiz
alacarte

alacarte will open the Main Menu found under System>Preferences>Main Menu
Create a New Item in Main menu and name it Nexuiz
The command should read as follows:
/home/your own USERNAME here/.Games/Nexuiz/nexuiz-linux-glx.sh

You can now find the game under Applications>Games

If you see me in the game, go easy on me!


Technorati Tags: nexuiz, installation

Dealing with Compiz and ATI settings

I've just reinstalled Ubuntu and I've learned the trick to get ATI to play nice with Ubuntu and allow compiz to work without a glitch.
I have an old ATI Radeon 9700 graphics card. It serves me well, and now with these settings, it really shines.
First thing I have to state to get this all to work is:
Absolutely DO NOT install the fglrx proprietary drivers for ATI regardless if a Hardware Driver prompt or icon appears on the screen. This will break this configuration and it will be harder to fix it and make things right. This is the driver that show up under System>Administration>Hardware Driver. Just so I'm clear, I'll repeat it: Don't install either of the following files,
fglrx-control
xorg-driver-fglrx
Either one of these will get you a free gift called the "White screen of death".
There are fixes for this problem or bug that may take some time and searching to resolve, but now that you've read this post you can avoid all that.

Here is all that you need to get ATI working with compiz to be able to enable all that eye candy that you always see on youtube.
Install the ATI driver found in the Synaptic Package Manager. The files that you want are called
xserver-xorg-video-ati
jockey-commom
jockey-gtk
Install them if they aren't already installed.

To enable compiz, install apt:compizconfig-settings-manager
Just click the link to allow it to auto install right now via Firefox.
You'll now be able to tweak your settings via System>Preferences>Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.

You should also install fusion-icon from the package manager so that you can easily access all your settings from a system tray icon.

Play around with the settings found in Advanced desktop effects but for starters, try enabling the Desktop cube and Cube rotation. Make sure that you have at least 4 workspaces set on your desktop and that you enable the shortcut key under CompizConfig settings>Rotate Cube>bindings>rotate cube>initiate.

Once more, with feeling

Lately as I got more and more familiar with Ubuntu, I've started tweaking settings and installing programs that were not ready for prime time. Getting to know Ubuntu and what makes it tick is a lot of fun.
Needless to say, as I fiddled with Ubuntu, it started complaining about all the various things that I was doing and soon, things were not running as smoothly as in the beginning.
I decided to reinstall Ubuntu. I found a site that features a unique and enhanced edition of Ubuntu called the Ultimate Edition. I downloaded the DVD iso so that I could install it and try it out to compare it to the vanilla flavoured default Ubuntu DVD I received from Shipit.
In most respects, the installation is similar to a regular ubuntu installation, with some different graphics during installation. The install added a lot of programs that don't come in a default install of ubuntu.
I finished installing and tried it out for about an hour, but I couldn't get my ATI card to work as easily as with the reguar ubuntu install. More about that in another post.
I pulled out my Ubuntu DVD and did another install right after that.
The great thing about Ubuntu compared to Windows is how fast the install process takes. I had my new system up and running in 20 minutes.
I now have a fresh install of Ubuntu and things are right with the world again.
Hopefully, my future tweaking doesn't screw it up again. I like to think of it as a great learning experience.

How to use Rar files in ubuntu

I downloaded a rar file today, but was unable to open it as it wasn't being recognized under ubuntu.
There is a simple way to get rar up and running by typing in two commands in terminal.
Open up terminal and type the following in the command line.

sudo apt-get install rar
sudo ln -fs /usr/bin/rar /usr/bin/unrar

The sudo ln command hard links rar and unrar so that files will be able to link to the same file.
Technorati Tags: ubuntu rar unrar

Music to my ears with Midi

I found a small gem of a program buried in the ubuntu repositories called NtED. It's a small WYSIWYG musical score editor. I installed it on a whim and just started playing around with trying to compose my own grand opus. When I hit play however, there was no sound coming from my speakers as the notes were being highlighted.
I found a simple solution to this was to install TiMidity (also in the repository) which enables MIDI to play under ubuntu. With that installed, I was instantly assaulted by my musical composition which will need a bit more tweaking before I let any musician near it. Your ears should thank me for that.Technorati Tags: ubuntu, NtED, TiMidity, musical, score, editor,

Who pulled the Fire(fox) alarm?

Well, Firefox 3 RC1 was announced this week and people were excited and talking everywhere I surfed. After a couple of days of this, I decided that I had to see for myself.
Since F3 isn't officially available yet in the Ubuntu repositories, I found instructions on adding it to ubuntu here.
I've been using the beta version of Firefox 3 and now that I have the Release Candidate version, I'm glad that I've upgraded as I love using Firefox 3 compared to version 2.
The only thing that I am disappointed with is the lack of addons at the moment, which is understandable, as it's just been released. Some of my most favourite addons are missing for now.
I do have Foxmarks and Scribefire installed as well as Stumbleupon and Customize Google.
However there are other features within the new browser that you are going to enjoy. Firefox loads a lot faster than previous versions (and uses less memory too, from some early benchmarks that have been run), which is something that I'm glad to see, as I've found Firefox 2 had been getting bogged down in terms of speed.

So if you're willing to risk a few inherent bugs that may creep in while you run this preview release browser, head over to Mozilla and download the RC1 today to download the source file or follow the instructions in the link above.

The Stink of Sync

If you're planning to use Ubuntu and you carry around a Windows Mobile
device, then give up all hope of ever syncing the two together.

Save yourself time and aggravation and don't even think of attempting
to make it work. There are multiple sites that will explain the steps
required and I think I've visited my fair share of them today.

I've installed all the needed files and followed all the necessary
steps as well as spent a lot of time in trying to teach Ubuntu to dance
with my Dell Axim X51V. I've come to the sad conclusion that it's just
not going to happen.

The closest that I came was when I ran synce-pls right at the start and
my Axim files showed up on the screen. Wow, I thought, that was easy.
Now let's try and sync.

I was following the steps on the Synce Wiki page which are very thorough, but that still didn't help me.
I've included a few screencaps of my troubles, so if you have any suggestions on how to proceed, feel free to leave me a comment or two.
For now, I'll have to fire up my wifes laptop if I need to sync my PDA with Windows.

Plug and play ubuntu

I'm really enjoying the way Ubuntu runs on my computer. I've had no troubles so far aside from getting the length of time it took me to get my scanner to work.
My MP3 player and digital camera were both detected without any consequence and I was able to drag and drop files easily with both devices. Nautilus opened up immediately once I plugged in either usb device. Simple and clean setup. No need to fumble with drivers or install software.

Waking up my printer

I own a Lexmark E210 laser printer.
Compared to my experience at getting my Scanner to work under Ubuntu, setting up my printer to work with Linux was the simplest thing in the world.
All I had to do was to plug in the USB cable and it was automatically found. I went to System->Administration->Printing and I was able to print out a test page immediately.
If only the scanner had been this easy!

Getting my USB Scanner up and running

Getting my scanner up and running was a chore. I spent a good couple of hours visiting various websites and perusing the ubuntu forums looking for any clues that would help.
I pieced together a variety of tips and tried implementing them one by one without success. After numerous tries, I just about gave up hope when I somehow managed to get my scanner to work.
I hope the following instructions will help others in a similar situation. From what I've pieced together, these steps should work with various scanners, as long as you have the particular firmware file for your own scanner. I own an Acer 640BT scanner and used the firmware file named U190V044.BIN

Using Synaptic Package Manager, I installed the scanner software. I installed sane, xsane, and libsane.

I downloaded the firmware file for my Acer 640BT scanner.
I installed it to the following directory:
/etc/sane.d

(I had previously tried to install it in this directory without success
/usr/share/sane/snapscan/)

I opened terminal and ran this command:
sudo gedit /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf
I edited snapscan.conf to look like this:

#------------------------------ General -----------------------------------

# Change to the fully qualified filename of your firmware file, if
# firmware upload is needed by the scanner
#firmware /usr/share/sane/snapscan/U190V044.BIN

# If not automatically found you may manually specify a device name.

# For USB scanners also specify bus=usb, e.g.
/dev/usbscanner bus=001
firmware /etc/sane.d/U190V044.BIN

I commented out the first firmware line with a # symbol and pointed the file to my firmware file for my USB scanner

I saved the file and rebooted the system. I ran Xsane Image Scanner found under
Applications->Graphics->Xsane Image Scanner
I also installed the KDE scanner software called Kooka which is another great program.
I am now also able to scan an image directly into Gimp using either xsane or the Gimp scanner plugin Quiteinsane and edit it directly before saving.

Hopefully this helps some people who are having similar troubles with configuring their scanners. While trying to get my scanner working, I made several other changes to files that I haven't documented here, so let me know if this info is helpful or not. I may edit this post with more accurate information if readers comment here.
Post your comments, stories and questions related to your particular scanner so that more people can benefit from this post.

Ubuntu Blog Entry Poster software
Testing out blog software that I installed in Ubuntu called gnome-blog
It allows me to post to blogger.com, but I'm not too happy with how it posts. The entire post was double and triple spaced, and I've had to edit it manually from within blogger.com.
I doubt I'll use it again.

How to get Flash working with Hardy Heron

I'm having difficulty getting Flash to work in Firefox such as sites like Youtube and Musicovery, two sites that I visit every so often. I used the Synaptic Package Manager to install the Flash plugin, but it still wasn't working for me.
Here's the fix I used to get it working.
I uninstalled the current Flash plugin, be it Gnash or the non-free version, or both as was my case.
Then download the following file and install it. Flash should now be working.

Flash plugin

Firefox addons I can't live without

Ubuntu Hardy comes loaded with Firefox 3 beta 5. (The RC1 version has just been announced and I'll be updating Firefox soon.) This new version throws most of the addons that I was using on Firefox 2 out the window. The few that do work are great. One excellent one that I've added right away is Foxmarks. It allows me to recover all my bookmarks from the last installation and it updates the bookmarks each time I exit. I can also grab those bookmarks from any other computer that has Firefox installed. Please note that at present, Foxmarks is only in beta testing for Firefox 3 and you'll need to sign up on their site to be included in the testing.

I'll simply list all the other addons that I've installed. I recommend that you check them out and give them a try as well.

Customize Google

Hyperwords

Stumbleupon

First Things First

When I installed Ubuntu today, I made the choice to use the entire hard drive rather than set up multiple partitions. It's just a personal choice and I have to option to change it if I like sometime down the road. I read about setting up the /home directory on a separate partition, and I'll look into how that is done sometime soon as I like the idea that your /home will be retained should you screw something up and need to reinstall Ubuntu. At least your personal files/data will not be lost that way.

I timed my installation today and it took all of 18 minutes to install Ubuntu to my hard drive. That includes having the Ubuntu DVD reformat my hard drive and the complete installation.

Now that the system is loaded, I've done some minor customization pertainant to my system and needs.

The first thing I did was to activate the auto login screen. On the various linux forums I've seen, this step seems to not be incouraged, but as I'm the only one accessing my PC, I like to be able to hit the power button and return to find the system ready and waiting for me. To access this, I opened the Login Window found under System>Administration>Login Window. After entering my passwork, I choose the Security Tab and clicked on Enable Automatic Login.
Before I exited the Login Windows Preferences, I made a few more changes to my system settings.

Under the 'General' Tab, I chose to use a 12 hour clock rather than the default 24 hour option. "Just say No" to 24 hours, kids.

Last thing was to change the startup themeand background colour found under the 'Local' Tab.
There were some software updates waiting for me to install so I did that next by clicking on the icon in the toolbar, top right corner. Let them all install and then reboot when/if prompted.

My History with Ubuntu

I had heard a lot about Ubuntu over the last few years and have read a lot about Linux and Ubuntu as well to familiarize myself with it. I had been using Windows XP all the while without complaint, so I really didn't feel the need to switch over.

I did order a free CD from ubuntu when version 5.04 (known as Hoary Hedgehog) was released, but I remember not being impressed with it then. I had just begun to learn about ubuntu then, and I was too inexperienced to dive into the linux waters.

I did keep watching the Ubuntu distros with some interest however over the years and kept ordering the CD's to try out, using them as Live Cds on my aging P4 computer. As I demanded more and more from my PC, Windows tried to keep up, but I seemed to be experiencing more glitches as the system aged. Recently, my computer failed me completed. I was unable to access my hard drives or log in at all. The system was not detecting the presence of any hard drives one day on boot up even though I didn't do anything unusual to my system the day before. I've been working with computers for years and feel comfortable with tinkering with the computer innards, so I tried several things to get my system operational without success. I eventually narrowed down the problem to either a system bios problem or worse, a complete hard drive failure. This still didn't help me to get access to my system until I tried using a Ubuntu CD that I remembered I had. I dropped it into the drive and rebooted my system. It loaded as a live cd and automatically found my hard drives. The two drives were not damaged, just not readable from Windows for some reason.

Since I had two hard drives, I installed Ubuntu on my second backup drive. Once I had Ubuntu installed, the system seemed to recover and start running like it never had before. I liked what I was seeing. It was just at this time that version 8.04 came out so I downloaded the iso and burned myself a DVD. (I ordered a CD of Hardy Heron as well just for the sake of tradition)

I now can boot from either drive. I managed to get Windows working again, but I'm booting each drive individually. For now I'm just switching cables inside the computer to choose which hard drive that I want to boot up.

I'll add some specs of my computer in future, as I add to this blog to help others who might want to know how I have it configured.

Today marks the start of my Ubuntu journey as I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 (the Hardy Heron) I've my main hard drive to load Ubuntu and I have my Windows hard drive set as my secondary drive which is mounted from Ubuntu so that I can access my files using Nautilus.

The Classroom is Open

Welcome to My Ubuntu Classroom.

I'm a new Ubuntu user and I've just installed Ubuntu on my PC today. I'm going to start this Blogger page today as well that will allow me to document what I learn from installing and using Linux both as a guide and future reference for me as well as a teaching place for others starting out as well. There is a lot written and discussed about Ubuntu and I've read a lot of posts from a lot of new users who run into trouble with various aspects of Ubuntu. I may experience them as well and I'll post both my troubles here, and hopefully the solutions as well.