Resurrection, part 2

I'm now part of a team that's deploying Ubuntu in an educational environment. It's pretty exciting, especially since we know that we're making a difference in spreading Linux.

The units came two weeks ago, and our Ubuntu 6.10 disks wouldn't boot up. Nor would the 6.02. Not even the 5.10 or 5.04. Wha?!

And, like the very curious experience with my laptop (see previous post), Windows98 and WindowsXP both installed on the units.

So we tried Fedora. Same problem.

Then SLAX. It worked! (Why?!)

UbuntuForums had the answer.

Apparently, the onboard video controller was a UniChrome Pro P4M800, which had poor drivers for GNU/Linux. All we had to do was edit the xorg.conf file to lessen the refresh settings available. It's magic.

Now we've fully deployed Edgy Eft on all units, save for three which had hardware problems.

Lesson learned: check for compatibility with hardware.

Resurrection

It's been a while. It started with the fiasco that was called Edgy Eft. In summary, I tried upgrading. I overlooked the fact that the upgrade process had issues with screensavers. In the middle of upgrade, the screensaver kicked in. Since aptitude was working on everything in the background, it overwrote (?) usernames and passwords. I had a partially-upgraded box with no way to unlock the 'saver. Reboot.

Then *poof!* No more OS. I had an unrescuable (well, it was rescuable, if I could put in may 2+ hours of work tracing dependencies) box. Easy, right? Just backup everything and install from scratch. So I did. I put everything on a CD via SLAX and got an Edgy Eft ISO burned.

Reboot, check CD for defects. Error encountered. Wha?!

Burn new CD. Check for defects on origin computer. Boot in laptop. Install in text mode. Error encountered.

I think I wasted 5 CDs of good copies. Damn computer wouldn't work with them.

Tried Fedora Core 4 (oh, the horror!). Burned ok. Installed on laptop. Error encountered.

Dammit! Fine. Let's see if the WindowsME recover disk (which came with the laptop) works.

Install ... ok.

Wha?!

Expedient image processing

When I use Windows, I make it a point to have IrfanView handle most of my image-related processing, such as conversion and viewing.

Now that I've made the switch, I naturally looked for the same functionality with gThumb and GQView. Sadly, all they offered was image-viewing. GIMP, on the other hand, only allowed processing one image at a time. I needed a way to resize about 200+ pictures as a batch.

The UbuntuForums led me to ImageMagick.

ImagMagick is a suite of image-processing tools that make use of the command-line interface (CLI). Yes, it *is* possible to handle images with that blinking cursor on a black background. Apparently, Ubuntu already has the ImageMagick tools installed, so all I had to do was figure out how to make things work.

I then found two simple tutorials on the subject:

1. Graphics from the command line
2. More graphics from the command line

A few minutes of study, and I was already resizing JPGs in the background. What I did notice was that the CPU took a hit when ImageMagick was running. Fully 100% of the CPU was used (maybe also because I also had thunar to show thumbnails, firefox with 4 tabs, gaim, etc.)

ImageMagick allowed me to experience some of the intricacies of the Linux OS, specifically with scripting. Check out the simple script I copied then modified:

for $img in 'ls *.JPG'
do
convert -resize 1024x $img new-$img.JPG
done

Its limitations:

1. The filename extension is case-sensitive and only jpeg files will be processed.
2. Resizing is limited to images with a landscape orientation.
3. It also assumes that the size of the output is 1024 pixels on the horizontal side.

This script will be undergoing more modifications as I learn more about ImageMagick. In the meantime, my needs have been fulfilled.

Mr. DJ, can I make a request?

To Apple:

I, just like a couple of hundred thousand individuals, am an avid fan of your ipod line of products. Bringing around my music has never been so easy: just pop in the CD to be ripped, and in a click or two, the AAC files are ready to be brought to work, the car, out of town, etc.

However, recently I decided to switch to an opensource lifestyle. I threw out Windows (the only version I have being the bug-infested Millenium Edition), and to my horror realized that iTunes was not available under Linux!

My first suggestion: please port iTunes to Linux. You don't have to open the source code to the public (because I understand some people just want it that way), but if you do, people will gladly help you out. After all, didn't the Mac OS start as a port of Unix?

Second: please give OGG support to the ipod firmware. I re-ripped my entire CD collection into OGG, since mp3 (or AAC) are proprietary formats (and they're rather large compared to OGG files of the same quality).

Did I throw out my ipod because there wasn't iTunes for Linux, or that it can't play a free file format? Heavens, no! But I did hack into it.

Enter Rockbox.

is an opensource jukebox software that allows the playing of OGG and mp3. Being opensource, it needed its own firmware to run, hence the need to tinker around with normally-invisible files, such as the bootloader and the Apple firmware.

I am thankful that the ipod has an override Disk Mode that stops any erroneous programming in its tracks. Without it, my ipod would be junk metal and plastic by now.

What does Rockbox make the ipod do that the ipod normally can't? It can customize the "while playing" screen (WPS), use fonts for the WPS, play games (like ports of Nokia's Snake, Doom (yes, there is!), Tetris, Bejeweled, etc), display funk visuals like fire, a mandelbrot, etc.

The installation is no walk in the park, but the results are amazing. I'm keeping it.

This determined OSS monkey will not be stopped.

iPod vs. OGG

In the continuing crusade to be an ethical computer user, I've decided to try, as much as I can, to only load music I own, rather than music I download. This led me to a splurge of music CDs two nights ago, eventually ripped via sound-juicer, in the OGG Vorbis format.

Problem is, my iPod mini doesn't handle OGG files at all. Scouring the internet yielded two promising results (read: hacks).

1. ipodlinux


2. rockbox

I had difficulty installing ipodlinux, primarily since it needs a library I can't, for the life of me, find at all, whether in the repos or not.

With rockbox as my only choice, I set out to hack the 'pod to boot into a Linux OS (yes, those things have OSes!). After about an hour of reading, tinkering and all, what do I have to show for it? An ipod that continually reboots. No OS at all.

Help!

Hi, WiFi!

gtkwifi was a bad idea. It screwed up my wireless connection so bad that I couldn't connect again, even after removing it from my system.

wifi-radar, on the other hand, was a godsend. Using a GUI, it searches for wifi networks within reach, and even attempts to connect to them. Coupling this with xfce's Networking, this little utility allows a mobile user switch between "wired" and wifi networks with no hitch.

wifi-radar: (5/5 stars)

WiFi-ed Xubuntu!

Yes, dear reader. I am now wifi-capable. It took a while, but again, the Ubuntu Forums really delivered this time. I suggest the tutorial of nzruss on installing, at least, the popular Linksys Wireless-G card (shown on left).

On a side note, I've ditched Opera in favor of Firefox. Opera felt less intuitive than Firefox. It's possible that I've grown so used to the Firefox interface that I just couldn't be without it, especially with TabMix Plus, Google Calendar Notifier, Google Calendar Quick Add and the iFox Smooth theme.

But Opera still sits in a tiny portion of my hard drive.

---

I've gone back to XFCE. With all the bells and whistles I wanted to put on the OpenBox desktop (not to mention all the necessary utilities) via gdesklets, I was inevitably going toward what I hated in the first place: a cluttered and wasteful desktop. This simple XFCE desktop promises to be first and foremost functional, and intuitive, at least for me.

Next task(s):

• Wifi Radar

Being Bourne Again

Switching on my xubuntubox (or should it be Oubuntu?) for the first time since last night gave me a nasty surprise. All the customizations are gone!

Right away I checked for my .xsession file. It was there, with all the adjustments I made: feh (for background), gdesklets (for desktop toys) and xfce-xcm-manager (for xfce goodness). Why didn't it run?!

Checking the CustomXsession Wiki, I found the culprit: my #!/usr/bin/env bash line was missing.

*sigh* The joy of tech.

OpenBox + gDesklets = fun!

I've left XFCE4 for the meantime and decided to go with OpenBox. It's a pretty nifty windowmanager that has a small footprint, and is highly customizable, at least in terms of GUI. Key elements still have to be drawn from other sources to make a desktop running it more productive, hence you will still need to get your desktop toys elsewhere.

Right now, the desktop is about 90% complete. It runs (aside from openbox) gdesklets and the xfce-xcm-manager for the GUI. I like it.

Things to do:

1. Include mount for USB drive.
2. Get a window pager.

Gotta love it!

DSL and router problems

Yesterday tested my fortitude in staying with Xubuntu. The router simply didn't work, and any attempts to fix the problem led nowhere. The Linksys website had no idea what my problem was, and I figured that 2 1/2 years is long enough for a router to have served faithfully. (Our tech supplier agreed: it was time for the router to retire.)

So there I was, without a router, hence no automatic way to connect to the internet. The XP box could connect easily, with the Internet Connection Wizard. But how about my XubuntuBox?

A search in the forums yielded an answer: pppoe & pppoeconf. Now, a minute later, I'm connected!

pon dsl-provider to connect,
poff dsl-provider to disconnect,
plog for status.

No sweat. :)