Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

Well We are now around to Ubutu Lucid Lynx (10.04) and it looks like nothing has changed support wise, so to get the backlight to adjust, just add:

nomodeset acpi_backlight=vendor

to the “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT” section, right after “quiet splash” and before the closing quotation mark. Now run

sudo update-grub

and you will be good to go! Reboot and try out your freshly brewed screen backlight adjustments!

Gateway T-6345U

Ubuntu Karmic is out and many updates have lead to great improvements in compatibility with this laptop. Karmic runs perfectly out of the box except for one thing – screen brightness adjustment doesn’t work. The fix for this is quite simple though.

1. Open up /etc/default/grub in your preferred text editor as root (For a nice GUI interface, press Alt+F2 then enter the command “gksu gedit /etc/default/grub” and press enter.)

2. Once you have the file open, add “nomodeset acpi_backlight=vendor” to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT entry, save, and exit.

3. Now run (in a terminal – Applications menu > Accessories > Terminal) “sudo grub-update” and reboot your computer. Once started up you should be able to adjust the screen brightness!

Not using Karmic yet? Try the Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) Tutorial for getting this laptop working in Jaunty (9.04).

The flyer says it all!

I’ve been running the next version of Ubuntu in a virtual machine to test it and report my findings in an easily read list of things to come. Also, some more in depth information for those who want to know. Along with that I’ve been following the updates mailing list and will be using 9.10 in a VM as if it were my main OS.

Screenshots can be found here: http://tan-com.com/tyler/screenshots/ubuntu-karmic/

After this post, I will be posting updates as they come in weekly. If they are important, however, I will post them the day they come out.

What’s new up in 9.10 as of today: (ordered by personal importance)

• Updated GDM with a new login screen – includes a session type switching menu and battery meter for laptops. http://tan-com.com/tyler/screenshots/ubuntu-karmic/gdm.png
• Firefox 3.5!
• Empathy is used for Instant Messaging instead of Pidgin. The only downside is Empathy can’t combine contacts as far as I can see. http://tan-com.com/tyler/screenshots/ubuntu-karmic/empathy.png
• New version of ALSA (1.0.20)
• Kopete has Facebook Chat support.
• Easy, seamless encryption of home directory is optionally available.
• Comes with UbuntuOne Sync tool pre-installed.
• The user switcher has been updated
  • Only contains Account Information, System Settings, Lock Screen, Switch User, and Quit (logout) buttons.
  • System Settings brings up a settings control panel with the contents of the System>Preferences and System>Administration menus.
  • Shutdown buttons were placed back in the System menu.
• The Accessories sub menu has a Swiss Pocket Knife as it’s icon

What needs to be fixed, added, updated:

• Nautilus crashes when you view “Computer” or any network folder.
• New Default theme (the screenshots are of a personally set theme)

Things I haven’t tested, but are in the upcoming release release:

• New Intel drivers (Accepted)
• New NVIDIA drivers

Next Release – Alpha 3 on July 23

A Karmic Koala

Today I’ve decided to take a look at the Daily Release (07/15/09) of Ubuntu and Karmic Koala and post my findings on it to show you what too look forward to in October!

Due to its early stage, this version of Ubuntu does not have a graphical installer, so I won’t post any screenshots for the installation. There is a new feature, however, to seamlessly encrypt your home directory which I will be choosing for the purpose of testing new features. Unfortunately, I got an error saying it could not encrypt my home directory, but on the up side, everything else went fine. Edit: After boot up, it asked me if I would like to try and encrypt it again, and all went fine.

On first boot up, I see several things. For one, the version of the GRUB boot leader has been updated, along with Gnome.

The new version includes a nice looking login screen which is somewhat like that of OS X, and has a couple of changes. 1) The fast user changer no longer has shutdown functions because those have been placed into the System menu as they were before the fast user switcher came out. 2) Ubunutu has sub menus items!!! WOAH! There’s a Logic Games sub menu in the Applications menu under games. 3) Empathy is used as the default IM client.

There are also a couple of things that haven’t changed that might should be such as Firefox hasn’t been updated to 3.5 and also the Wallpaper is still the Jaunty defauly, but that probably won’t change till late betas or even RC.

All of my screenshots so far, and ones soon to come are/will be in http://tan-com.com/tyler/screenshots/ubuntu-karmic/

I will be posting updated articles about the new features of Karmic Koala

Gateway T-6345U

I recently got a new Gateway T-6345U laptop and (being a Linux lover) I installed Ubuntu Jaunty on it right after I made sure it all worked.

Installation

Installing Ubuntu was as easy as usual, though it went a little slow due to Gnome’s power manager’s lack of using the maximum CPU speed. Fortunately, there’s a panel applet that is installed by default to help with this. It’s called “CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor”. Due to the face that the Laptop has two CPUs, you will need two instances of this applet each set to monitor a different CPU.

First Run

When you reboot after installing it, everything works perfectly… well, almost everything. Three (sometimes vital) things don’t work right out of the box. These three are the desktop effects, adjusting the screen brightness, and the headphones and microphone jacks on the front. Don’t panic if your headphones or microphone doesn’t work, it’s a software issue which I have also found a fix for. Oh, ad you will probably want to add the CPU scaling applet to your panel.

EDIT 06/06/09: I have also found that when a memory card is put into the reader, it is recognized only as generic storage media. I will post a fix for this when/if I find one.

EDIT 07/14/09: I have added the steps to get the headphone and microphone jacks on the front to work properly.

Fixing Desktop Effects (Compiz)

First, we’ll start off by making a bash script. Open up a text editor (like Gedit) and insert the following into it:

#!/bin/bash

SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz

Now save it as “.compiz_enable.sh” in your home directory, and make it executable by running the following in a terminal.

chmod +x ~/.compiz_enable.sh

Then, got to the “System” menu (on the top gnome panel by default) Preferences > Startup Applications. Click “Add” in that window.

Name: Compiz Enable
Command: /home/your-username/.compiz_enable.sh
Comment (optional): Make compiz work.

Add a Startup Application

Finally click “Add” then “Close” and you are finished!

The script we created will be started every time you log in, forcing Compiz to work. To see the effects, logout then back in.

Screen Brightness

To be able to adjust the screen brightness, we will first need to go to the “System” menu (on the top panel by default) then to Prefrences > Startup Applications. When that opens up, click Add and put in the following:

Name: Adjustable Brightness
Command: xrandr –output LVDS –set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native
Comment (optiona): Make brightness controls work.

Add a Startup Application

Once all the information is entered, click “Add” then “Close” and you are all set. Like the previous one, this runs the command when you login. To see the effects, you must logout then log back in.

Headphones/Microphone

The version of ALSA that comes with Ubuntu 9.04 does not have complete support for the audio card built into this laptop, however just upgrading to the new version of ALSA will not fix the issue. Luckily for us there is a fairly easy way to git it all fixed up.

First off, you need to download and extract the ALSA upgrade script by soundcheck on the Ubuntu Forums which I have mirrored on my site by running this command:


wget http://tan-com.com/tyler/files/AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.17.tar
tar -xf AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.17.tar


Once downloaded and extracted, you will need to run the script.


sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.17.sh -di


The script will run with no feedback except a little message telling you where the log is and how to view it. Once the script runs, you need to append a line to the ALSA configuration file. To open the config file, use either of the commands below.


gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf <- Graphical Editor
or
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf <- Terminal Based Editor


Once you open the file, add the line “options snd-hda-intel model=eapd probe_mask=1 position_fix=1″ to the end of the file, save, and close. Now all you have to do is reboot, and your headphone jack will work perfectly!

For the microphone, however, you need to open the Volume Control window (Volume Control > “Volume Control…”) and click Preferences. When the Preferences window opens, check off “Capture” and “Digital”, click close, and go to the Recording tab in Volume Control. Here you must turn the volume up for both of them and choose Digital as a capture device by clicking on the microphone below the slider.

You are now ready to record audio from your microphone!

For the Curious

Here is the output of “lspci”:
tyler@localhost:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 04)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 04)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)


Conclusion

Overall, this is a great laptop. The specs are amazing, and the price is perfect! Ubuntu Jaunty runs really nice on this laptop and boots up (on an ext4 partition) in about 30 seconds. If you are looking for a great laptop for a low price, I would definitely suggest yo get this one.

Have any questions? Feel free to post them in the comments!

To setup the Wii Remote as a cursor, you need three things. A Wii Remote, a computer with Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 (I believe that this works on some older versions too), and a Bluetooth adapter (built in, usb, etc.).

First off, you need to install a few packages. These are already in the Ubuntu Repositories.


sudo apt-get install wminput wmgui lswm


Once that completes, you run the following command:


lswm


This commad finds the address of your Wii Remote, remember to press the 1 and 2 buttons on the controler to put it into discovery mode. When it finds the controller, it will give a hexidecimal number like this: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (the Xs being replaced by numbers).

Now we need to add some text to the end of the “/etc/modules” file, so that we can use the Wii Remote as a mouse. Open it up in gedit or the terminal (nano) by running this:


sudo gedit /etc/modules
or
sudo nano /etc/modules


Now, on a new line at the end, add “uinput” to the file, save and close, then restart your computer.

When the computer is booted up again, just run the following command, replacing “[XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX]” with the number that was returned by the lswm command.


sudo wminput [XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX]


Make sure to put the Wii Remote in discovery mode (1 & 2).

When Wii Remote is connected, the terminal will say “Ready.”. This will allow you to use the accelerometor in the Wii Remote to control the mouse by tilting the remote.

Unfortunately that is rather hard, so to get it to work like the Wii Remote does on the Wii, you will need to do a few extra steps.

Before anything, you need a constant bright light. Because of how the Wii’s remotes work, you can also use an infrared LED. I made one by modifying a normal TV remote using a couple of wires and a light switch.To see if the infrared light was working, I used a camera since you can’t see the infrared with your eyes.

Once you set that up, all we have to do is copy and edit a config file by running these commands.


cd /etc/cwiid/wminput
sudo mv default default.bak
sudo cp ir_ptr default


Almost done! Now we need to edit the config file using gedit or nano again.


sudo gedit default
or
sudo nano default


In that file, you will need to remove the tiles (~) from “~ABS_X” and “~ABS_Y”. When that’s done, (save and) close out of it and run this to get the Wii Remote. Remember to press 1 & 2.


sudo wminput [XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX]


Once it is connected (says “Ready.”) then you can use the Wii Remote as your mouse. A demonstration by Jake is avialable below.

ATI

(Edit: this tutorial does not work with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and I will unfortunately not be able to update it for Karmic because I do not have the time nor hardware.)

(Edit 03/14/10: I no longer have the hardware to work on this issue. -This tutorial is no longer officially supported by myself- I personally suggest finding a way to get new hardware (NOT ATI – the driver aren’t worth it) and upgrading to the latest release of Ubuntu.)

Information on how to fix this issue in newer releases of Ubuntu is available.

Joseph Crowell
4/6/2010

Help with the open source ATI legacy drivers on Ubuntu 9.10:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

Follow that guide to the point where it links to “KMS with a Radeon card” then follow the link to here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/KernelModeSetting

and follow the instructions in the section KMS with a radeon card.

This worked perfectly for me on my ATI Radeon Xpress 200M.

With the newest realease of Ubuntu (9.04 Jaunty Jackalope) came a major problem with support for older ATI graphics cards. Though these cards work with generic drivers, the ability to use dual heads and more advanced configurations has been lost. You may think that you can simply head over to AMD’s ATI driver page and get a driver, but the latest version of Catalyst does not support the older cards. “Maybe I can just download an older version of the driver,” might be what you are thinking, but the old driver is not compatible with the new version of xserver that is included with Ubuntu Jaunty.

The only way to use the old driver is to downgrade your xserver, which is actually not too hard. As long as you have an internet connection and some terminal skills, you are set.

WARNING: Running commands as root (using sudo or su) can potentially damage your operating system. Be sure to CAREFULLY read EVERYTHING. Only proceed with these steps if you are confident with what you are doing.

ALSO: This tutorial is not guaranteed to work on every system, but since this tutorial itself has worked on MANY occasions, please feel free to be polite in your comments. Suggestions given in the comments will be added to the tutorial as needed. Thanks!

First off we will want to backup your current “sources.list” (the file that contains all of the repository information), so simply run the command:
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.bak
Now, we will open up the original “sources.list” file and set it all back to the intrepid repositories. This can easily be done with Gedit’s replace tool. You can, of course, use any other text editor. To open the file in Gedit, just type the following into a terminal.
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
In gedit, simply select the word “jaunty” anywhere in the file and click on “Replace” on the tool bar. When the dialogue box comes up, type “intrepid” into the box labeled “Replace With:” and click “Find” then “Replace All”

After replacing “jaunty”, save the file and close out of Gedit (or what ever text editor you used), and go back to a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get update
Once the repositories are updated, make sure all ATI drivers are uninstalled.

Now we will uninstall the current version of the xserver using the following command. (Note that gnome-session and fast-user-switcher-applet are specific to Ubuntu. Variants like Kubuntu and Xubuntu will not need to remove these because they are not installed)
sudo apt-get autoremove xserver-xorg gnome-session fast-user-switch-applet
This may take a minute or so. After it completes, we will reinstall the xserver and also install the ATI drivers. (Note that gnome-session and fast-user-switcher-applet are specific to Ubuntu. Variants like Kubuntu and Xubuntu will not need to install them because they are not part of your desktop environment)
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg fglrx-amdcccle fglrx-kernel-source xorg-driver-fglrx libdrm2=2.3.1-0build1 gnome-session fast-user-switch-applet=2.24.0-0ubuntu6
When everything is finished installing, you will want to open up Synaptic Package Manager and lock all of the xserver-xorg*, fglrx*, xorg-driver-fglrx, libdrm2, gnome-session, and fast-user-switch-applet packages at their current version. This is done by selecting the package then going to the “Package” menu and clicking on “Lock Version”. You can also do this in the terminal by running:
sudo su
then
echo 'package-name hold' | dpkg --set-selections
Make sure to repeat the last command for each package that was installed by the previous commands. (This should total to about 47 packages or so.)

Once all of the xserver and ATI driver packages have been locked, run
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list.bak /etc/apt/sources.list
and restart your computer.

Once your computer restarts, all you should be able to use all of the features provided by the ATI drivers that were just installed.

EDIT 06/05/09: After you restart, make sure to go to the Hardware Drivers manager under the “System” menu: Administration > Hardware Drivers and enable that ATI driver and reboot again. (Thanks Nicholas)

EDIT 07/15/09: I have added the 3D fix suggested in the comments. (Thanks Dario)

EDIT 07/25/09: I have also added the fix for the CPU problem that was suggested. (Thanks Flávio)

EDIT 08/04/09: I have once again added a user submitted fix for the Fast User Switcher. (Thanks Shaun)

EDIT 09/23/09: An important comment from Mark:

I did run into one issue- after activating the ATI driver and rebooting, I got a great big watermark in the bottom right corner of my screen with an AMD/ATI logo warning me of “Unsupported Hardware”.  If anybody else runs into this, this is how I fixed it:

1. Download the 9.3 legacy driver package from ati at this page:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Legacy/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx?type=2.7&product=2.7.4.3.3.3.1&lang=English

2.  Extract (don’t install!) the files from the 9.3 package to a folder with a command like:
sh ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.

x86_64 –extract driverfiles

3.  Replace your ATI ‘control’ file with the one from this 9.3 package:

First back up your existing file just in case:
sudo cp /etc/ati/control /etc/ati/control.backup

Then copy the new file in place:
sudo cp driverfiles/common/etc/ati/control /etc/ati

4.  Reboot and profit!  No more watermark.

Sometimes a corrupt installation package can corrupt your package management system leaving your Linux unable to install or on remove any packages (Software). Here is the message error I got from apt-get after trying to install ndas-admin for Ubuntu.
$sudo apt-get install mplayer   (or any package)
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: The package ndas-admin needs to be reinstalled, but I can’t find an archive for it. (this is the error)

I got stuck with this problem and this article fixed it right up!

Original post by ITechLog > Fix Broken package – Ubuntu

Here I’ve compiled a list of all of the Ubuntu releases with their release dates, names, and version numbers.

1. October 26, 2004 – Ubuntu Warty Warthog (4.10)
2. April 8, 2005 – Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog (5.04)
3. October 12, 2005 – Ubuntu Breezy Badger (5.10)
4. June 1, 2006 – Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS*)
5. October 26, 2006 – Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10)
6. April 19, 2007 – Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04)
7. October 18, 2007 – Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10)
8. April 24, 2008 – Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS*)
9. October 30, 2008 – Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10)
10. April, 2009 – Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04)

(*LTS – Long Term Support. Releases with long term support are released every two years, and supported for three years (Desktop) or five years (Server) after the release.)