Linux for Keysers | Adventures in Open Source

Just cracked open the old blog and noticed that I haven't posted since Sept (!) and I wanted to post something, so here it is. I bought a house last month so I've been a bit busy with all of that. In fact, my "me" time that I used to use to play around with all the new technology out there has been significantly reduced. I will say that I have spent a few days playing around with Tomcat6, Spring tc Server, and more than a handful of various .WAR files. I have to say I'm impressed. Incredibly powerful, simple, and useful technologies don't always find their way to the masses, but this is definitely a win. I'm still torn as to whether or not this makes more or less sense than a Python-based solution, but so far, I'm up for further investigation. What do you think? What's your favorite webapp platform and why? What languages do you tend to go to when it's "your program" and not someone else's? And for the million-dollar follow-u...

We're rapidly approaching the release date of the next Ubuntu release: 10/10/2010 (whoa, how's that for an epic release date?). I'm still on the fence about "upgrading" because I like the idea of stability for a while (at least on my work computer). I'll definitely be tossing this on a test machine once it releases. I'll use it to show off the next gen of features if nothing else. For the uninitiated, the features list can be found here . My understanding of this release is that it'll be a playground for many cutting edge features. Stability is definitely not one of the key goals. What are your plans for this release? Production? Playground? Testing? Skip it? Let us know in the comments!

Dual booting. It can be a wonderful thing or a horrible nightmare. With Windows 7, users may have more than one reason to want the ability on their HTPC machines. Especially if several pieces of hardware just don't work as they should in Ubuntu. The trick is, Windows 7, by default, wants to be the ONLY OS on your computer, even if you've already installed other OSes. My recommendation? Install Windows 7 first, in a carefully planned partition (create using Ubuntu LiveCD and GParted, of course), and then install Ubuntu. But what if you just HAD to install Ubuntu first in that secondary partition and now need to install Windows? Windows will erase your Grub settings from the boot sector. This means no more ability to boot into Ubuntu. Oh No! Not to worry, there's an easy way to recover from said disaster. I found this excellent post and here are the details for archival purposes: This post discusses the easy way of restoring Grub2 using Ubuntu Live CD. First, boot with the...

Really just posting this for my own reference later, but here's the link and the details: Enter this into your Terminal it is the code for the firmware and to install it Code: wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/22xxdrv_27086.zip wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/extract.sh Code: sh extract.sh;sudo cp *fw /lib/firmware you need to install mercurial and build essential for the next steps Code: sudo apt-get install mercurial libncurses5-dev then we need the driver using this command to fetch Code: hg clone http://kernellabs.com/hg/saa7164-stable/ now change to the directory Code: cd saa7164-stable then run make Code: make CONFIG_DVB_FIREDTV:=n that will take some time, go grab a drink and wait it out, when it completes run this command Code: sudo make install wait for that to complete and reboot from the command line Code: sudo reboot Note that an application like TVtime will not ...

I recently setup a Win 2008 R2 VM and proceeded to remote connect to it from Ubuntu 10.04. Everything worked perfectly except the mouse cursors were black (and some were corrupt). Solution? Use a newer version of rdesktop that doesn't ship with Ubuntu. There is a handy PPA that can be added using the following command: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ricolai/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install rdesktop [UPDATE] It appears ricolai may have removed the package from his PPA. To remedy the situation, I've uploaded the working binaries for x64. Sorry, I don't have the x86 any longer. More information on the bug can be found here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rdesktop/+bug/385974?comments=all

The internal microphone does not work after a default install. Append the line "options snd-hda-intel model=dell-s14" to file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, reboot and adjust the mixer levels.

Here is the fairly well done test results for a Dell E6410 Laptop running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I've seen all of the issues reported so far on my laptop and can confirm that the workarounds do actually work.

On my newly purchased work laptop (Dell E6410 with nVidia GPU), the system would boot to a blank screen when attempting to install, run from CD, or after installation. Here's the workaround .

Many channels provide near-instant downloads of their content, but it isn't quite the same as having a fully-functioning live version of the programming. Enter P2PTV. While somewhat shady in legal terms (try at your own risk), it might prove useful for some wishing to experiment in this area. Here are the steps for installing SopCast (one of the more popular versions) on Ubuntu 10.04: echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jason-scheunemann/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release -cs` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list && sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys CD30EE56 Now install SopCast with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install sopcast-player sp-auth Run with Alt+F2 -> sopcast-player or get it at Applications -> Sound & Video -> SopCast Player. For more US based channels, try Justin.TV instead. It even has the option of pausing a show and coming back to it later. Credit

While still in active development with many features not yet ready for everyday use, Gnome-Shell is showing a lot of potential. I recently installed the current version available through the Ubuntu 10.04 repositories to give it a test drive. It's not ready for primetime, that's for sure, but it does have some features that I find compelling. Overview Mode I use Compiz' multiple desktops using the rotating desktop on all my machines that support 3D acceleration. I typically mentally map where all my apps are in relation to each other so that I can quickly switch to the workspace I need to perform a task. However, I sometimes find myself wondering where I left Firefox open, for instance. Having the option to blow up the whole cube on the desktop is nice, but I found the Overview display of Gnome-Shell to be even better. Simpler Navigation For me, anything that reduces clicks is a good thing. The overall interaction with Gnome-Shell as compared to Gnome is just that; simp...

I posted awhile ago about my recommendation for an IDE (Wingware's IDE). I'd like to retract that recommendation in favor of one I've been experimenting with lately: Eclipse + pyDev. First off, the IDE is open source and is one of the most popular IDEs on the market today. I wasn't aware of how Aptana had fully integrated Python as a plugin until yesterday. I can only say that I am extremely pleased with the result. They did it right, no doubt about it. Check it out on your favorite OS today. For Ubuntu 10.04 users, simply add Eclipse to your system through the Software Center and then follow the instructions on pydev.org to add it as a plugin. Make sure you follow the instructions for adding it as a plugin.

Well, not really gone, just not installed by default. You can get it again by installing the package "compiz-fusion-plugins-extra". See more information on this here . Also, to enable rotating the desktop cube with the mouse wheel, set rotate left to button 4 and rotate right to button 5 in the bindings for the mouse.

There are a lot of these lists out there. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll just link to some of my favorites and add the pieces that might be missing: Before I do anything: *Update the system! I use a mirror close to me, such as UC Davis' math dept. *Install the proprietary drivers for my system (for my Dell D630, it's the Wireless STA driver and the latest Nvidia driver). *Run this script and install the pieces I want (adds repos automatically - nice!). Some others suggestions: Install ubuntu-restricted-extras. Should give you the default Sun Java stuff as well as Flash (though, if you're using the 64bit distro, you'll end up reinstalling it using the proper build. See my earlier post on this). http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/04/10-things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu.html Need games? Try PlayDeb . To play encrypted DVDs, the libdvdcss2 package is essential. libdvdcss is a simple library designed for accessing DVDs like a block device without having to b...

[Outdated] I've found that the Flash plugin for 10.04 is less than spectacular out of the box. I suspect it has something to do with the 64bit OS and found this article explaining how to fix things up. Basically, here are the steps: Download 64bit installer . Close browsers Make installer executable, run it. "Remove Flash" Add 64bit Flash That's it. [Update] With the release of 10.2, we're basically back to square one again. However, I found a slightly better method of getting the latest version installed this time around. Since it relies on someone's PPA, it may or may not work for forever, but here's what I did *this time*. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sevenmachines/flash && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install flashplugin64-installer After that, if you want 10.3 or later, you need to download the .tar.gz from Adobe Labs (64bit version, that is), extract the .so and replace every same-named .so on your system.

After upgrading to 10.04, I discovered that the medibuntu (extra storage for things like ffmpeg, restricted extras, etc.) is down. I don't know how long it will be this way, but here's the workaround for connecting to the mirror: Add these lines to the end of /etc/apt/sources.list #Medibuntu deb http://mirrors.ucr.ac.cr/medibuntu/ hardy free non-free deb-src http://mirrors.ucr.ac.cr/medibuntu/ hardy free non-free run the following: wget -q http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add then run the following: sudo apt-get update

Ran into my first snag. Apparently the Juniper Network Connect client for Linux doesn't like 2 things about the defaults installed on Ubuntu 10.04 64bit: Requires the Sun JRE/JDK, not the OpenJRE/OpenJDK installed by default. Requires the 32bit JRE, not the 64bit JRE Obviously frustrating. I found the following resources to overcome this problem: Switching from OpenJRE/JDK to Sun's version (without uninstalling, due to dependency issues). Setup the 32bit JRE to run alongside the 64bit , and Download and modify the junipernc script by pointing it to the 32bit version. To do this, add this line after the # lines at the beginning: export JDK_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun Test your setup here when you're done. To reconnect after disconnecting, you might need to relogin to the vpn website and then run the connection script again. The session doesn't always exit nicely. The big downside to all this is that you'll now have 3 different Java environments installed on...

A lot of these were supported in 9.10 but I skipped that update in anticipation of 10.04. Here are some of the big wins I've encountered so far: Eclipse 3.5.2 is finally in the repo! Finally, we're getting some love from the guys at Ubuntu on this. No need to install from source any more. Boot time/Login time. MUCH faster than my ext3 based 9.04 was. Nvidia driver support. Multi-monitor setup is much more stable than before. Seems to even remember that I have 2 monitors attached to the laptop. Very slick compared to 9.04. Software center. I didn't think I'd like this because they tossed out the ratings system for now, but actually, I really like it. It displays any newly added repos I grab from Launchpad in the same area as the defaults. I can even view apps available in one repo vs. the others. Stability. I can't emphasize this enough - bells and whistles are nice and all, but this version is just rock-solid so far. Love it on my laptop. I've only had i...

I wanted to give pyDev a spin after installing a new copy of Ubuntu 10.04 with Eclipse. Turns out it needs one additional package to install Eclipse plugins correctly. I kept getting this error: The artifact file for osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.cvs,1.0.400.v201002111343 was not found. Here's the fix : sudo apt-get install eclipse-pde

I've now been using Ubuntu for about 2 years. I'm certainly happy with it and would never consider going back to Windows or paying the premium for an essentially equivalent OS (Mac OS X). I, like many users, have come to appreciate Ubuntu as not only a solid replacement OS for Windows or Mac, but for what it truly is: The Ultimate Linux Distribution. That's a big claim. How can I say such a thing? Aren't all Linux distros essentially built on the same foundation? Well, yes, they are. But then again, all cars run on four wheels. What sets Ubuntu apart isn't the fact that it's Linux or even that it's Debian-based, it's the people behind the effort. Ubuntu's core team, Canonical, is doing something no other Linux distro has been able to do. It's giving guidance on and meeting the expectations of the average user. And it's doing it at a rate that's significantly outpacing all of its competitors. Ubuntu has been the #1 distribution on D...

Wondering what you'll get with that shiny new system when you switch in 20 days to Ubuntu 10.04? Besides the guaranteed stability that comes with a long-term support release (LTS), here's a rundown taken from Ubuntu's website of the new features added in 10.04: New features since Ubuntu 9.10 These features are showcased for your attention. Please test them and report any bugs you find: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs GNOME Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 includes the latest GNOME desktop environment with a number of great new features. Mozilla Firefox Default search engine has been changed to Yahoo! The default Home Page will use either Google or Yahoo! depending on user setting. Linux kernel 2.6.32 Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 includes the 2.6.32-16.25 kernel based on 2.6.32.9. KDE SC 4.4 Kubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 features the new KDE SC 4.4. For more information about new features in Kubuntu, see the Kubuntu technical overview . HAL removal This beta sports full re...