Installing Gentoo with Ubuntu

Ubuntu has been the only OS on my Gateway t-1616 laptop for over a year now, and I'm pretty happy with it except for its occasional slowness. I've done some research and made up my mind to install Gentoo as a secondary os and maybe replace Ubuntu with it someday in the future. I read through the intallation instruction on the official website and found out that the install CD does no more than providing a pre-existing linux to set up the environment for the new system. Then you chroot into the new environment and let emerge take care of the rest of work (not true, really). Instead of downloading the install cd, I just fired up a terminal under gnome, Ubuntu and did the job anyway. It was way more enjoyable than doing it on a live cd. I made the new partition with the GUI of gparted, and downloaded stage3 and portage with Firefox 3. And of course I surfed the net while emerging stuff into the new system. That's kind of fun, isn't it?

Gateway T-1616 Users: Get Ready for Ubuntu Intrepid

No more Linux Mint-for-the-wireless. Install Intrepid in no time and you will get a fully functioning Gateway T-1616! I doubt if this is the last time writing about Gateway T-1616 and Ubuntu Linux.

WPA Working Smoothly on Ubuntu Intrepid ( 8.10 )

It is a nightmare to wait for the new release of Ubuntu 8.10 for me. Plus I accidentally crashed my old Ubuntu 8.10 by mistyping a rm command. So there's no reason why shouldn't I install alpha 6 version of Intrepid several days earlier than the plan. What thrilled my is that I found the wireless card of my Gateway T-1616, which is an rtl8187b, is working perfectly for a WPA wireless network. The weird inexplainable behaver before, such as connects to a WPA wireless signal and then works on a strength of 0%, are all gone! What's better, I can really use the new-human theme for a while!

Full Functioning Gateway T-1616 ( rtl8187b ) with Ubuntu 8.04 and Later

As questions about rtl8187b wireless card (of Gateway T-1616) + Ubuntu 8.04 accumulating here, I figured that it is time to make a reply. My answer is: I don't know how to make it work. Despite the fact that Ubuntu 8.04 is the only OS on my Gateway T-1616 and almost everything is working healthily, wireless included. To get that: Install a Linux Mint, you will find yourself being able to install a working windows driver for rtl8187b with ndiswrapper. Then change your /etc/apt/sources.list into the same as a normal Ubuntu hardy one, update & upgrade everything. The wireless then will still work, so will be other stuff. And if you don't like the look & feel of Mint, go ahead and read Full Circle Issue 16: GNOME-Look Guide. It does an excellent job telling us how to change the look of everything on ubuntu. The only blemish of this approach is that the mic of Gateway T-1616 wouldn't work.

Learn Python On Ubuntu Linux FOR FREE

Dig the repository and you will be able to find some Python caddies. Like this package:

diveintopython

A Python tutorial written by Mark Pilgrim. There's even a Chinese version in the repository:

diveintopython-zh

If you are interested in GUI development, check this out:

python-gtk2-tutorial

Another tutorial on NumPy:

python-numeric-tutorial

What else? Keep digging!:)

Installing Virtualbox 1.6.2 on Ubuntu 8.04 ( Hardy )

Apparently Virtualbox has made a good improvement after being taken by Sun. However it is still not mature enough to work out of the box when it is installed on Ubuntu 8.04 in the first place. A little hacking is still required. First of all, download the full version from the website of Virtualbox (instead of install the open source version directly from the repository). Install it in a way you like. And hope it works. If it doesn't, carry on reading this. You need to add your current user to a group named vboxusers, again, in your favorite way. If you don't have one, try this one. Check if the group exists:

sudo grep vboxusers /etc/group

If nothing shows up, add it:

sudo addgroup vboxusers

Now add the user to the group:

usermod -a -G vboxusers $USER

Now you should at least be able to open Virtualbox properly and install an operating system on it. Let's take Windows XP for an example here, make sure you installed Guest Additions (Devices-Install Guest Additions). The next step is to authorize the user to use USB. Edit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh with your best editor, make sure the following lines are uncommented

mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs domount usbfs “” /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644 ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Create a new group and add the current user to it:

sudo addgroup usbfs sudo usermod -a -G usbfs $USER

Then edit /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules Find

LABEL=”usb_serial_start” ATTRS{idVendor}==”0403″, ATTRS{idProduct}==”6001″, \ , MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”dialout” LABEL=”usb_serial_end”

Add GROUP="usbfs" to it, like this:

LABEL=”usb_serial_start” ATTRS{idVendor}==”0403″, ATTRS{idProduct}==”6001″, \ GROUP="usbfs", MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”dialout” LABEL=”usb_serial_end”

Save the file. Find out the group id:

grep usbfs /etc/group

Remember the number within it, for example on this machine, I get the result

vboxusers:x:1003:name

Thus

1003

is the id. Open /etc/fstab, add the following line to the end:

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=1003,devmode=664 0 0

Reboot the host system. And then you should be able to enjoy the VM with available USB support.

Installing Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) From Hard Disk

This is a way to install Ubuntu without burning a installation CD. Download the alternative desktop CD you need(x86 or amd64) from the ubuntu website. Prepare a swap partition(if you haven't had one), a/some partition(s) for the new installation. A good tool to do this is GParted. Next thing to do is to download two special files for ubuntu hard disk installation: initrd.gz and vmlinuz. From x86: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/ amd64: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/ Make sure the file names are initrd.gz and vmlinuz. Firefox added a .htm extension automatically on vmlinuz when I downloaded it. Place the two files as well as the iso file in a partition which is different from the one you intend to install the new system. Attention: this is very import, or the installation will fail because it tries to remove the needed files during the process. For example, you want to install ubuntu on sda8, and you store the files mentioned above in sda7, under /path/ . If you are not familiar with the partition naming convention for linux, you may want to read this first. Make sure you have a working GRUB. It could be the one you are using to boot existing operating systems, or one on a live CD. For windows users, get a grub4dos Reboot the box, when GRUB shows up to let you choose which system to boot, press c. You will find yourself in command line with a leading

grub>

For those who don't know, grub counts hard disks and partitions from 0, so the third partition on the second hard disk is (hd1,2). Type in the command as follows (under the previous path assumption):

root (hd0,6) kernel (hd0,6)/path/vmlinuz initrd (hd0,6)/path/initrd.gz boot

Then you will forward into the normal installation process. And that is the end of this story. Enjoy your Hardy Heron!

Update your Ubuntu from 7.10 to 8.04, NOW!

It's time. Back up all your important files. Make sure you have at least 1GB space on the Ubuntu partition. Install update-manager in a terminal if you don't have it:

sudo aptitude install update-manager

Stay in the terminal:

update-manager -c -d

There's no need to use sudo here. Update Manager will tell you that Ubuntu 8.04 is available now! Don't hesitate to click the button "update"! Next, you will see a release candidate for "Hardy Heron", feel free to neglect it (or read it, if you can wait), click the button "Upgrade". There's not much left to do but wait in the next couple of hours. Except that you need to click "Yes" when the manager ask you about changing source.list. When it almost comes to the end, a window asking if you want to delete the old packages, let's call it "Remove". Well, you need to restart your machine before start exploring Hardy Heron.

Make your evil iPod nano 3rd generation work with Linux

Well, for those who have a neutral attitude to iPod, and who use just Linux as personal operation system, I'm one of you. I think I don't need to say a lot about the reasons why I name this tiny MP3 player "evil".

For those who are not in the same situation as us, here's the story.

I bought this iPod nano 3rd gen from the official website, and happily received it before the tragedy started. I knew that it works with iTunes, but there's not a Linux version of that. I tried installing the newest iTunes with wine, however, the installation progress told me that I can't do this on linux. I download an old version and wine worked in installing it this time. Everything looked fine until I realized that this iTunes could do nothing but play music files. It didn't detect iPod nano 3rd gen at all.

Then I updated rhythmbox, which is installed by default in Ubuntu. Amazingly it recognized iPod and was able to transfer mp3 files into it. Although there were still some problem on mp3 tag editing, I did enjoyed few days driving iPod with Ubuntu. Later I learned that a newer version of Amarok could the samething.

But if that had been the ending, I wouldn't call it a tragedy!

The ending started on the day when I helped one of my friend install the newest iTunes on a Windows laptop. I plugged my iPod 3rd gen on the machine, iTunes found it, and told me that something is wrong with it, and then iTunes downloaded something sized around 50MB, redetected iPod, and I found all mp3 as well as all the game records disappeared in the player. Later, as you may expected, rhythmbox/Amarok stopped working on it. Every time after I tried to transfer something from Linux, the player just didn't display it. And iTunes on other machine would told me the same story that I needed to download/install that 50MB package.

Good job, Jobs!

But, wait.

VMware come to the rescue!

I'm not a Linux purist, nor am I a hard-drive-space-grubber. If you mind spending 5 GB on your hard drive to get the job done dirtily, don't waste time reading this post then. For the rest of you, let's start rocking!

Actually there's not much left to say. Here's all: Install VMware workstation -- Windows -- iTunes .

After that you'll get a virtual machine running on Linux, and a iTunes running in the virtual machine. Theoretically, it's possible to take advantage of the feature "Unity" in the new VMware workstation. Thus, iTunes would look just as a native application when working. But I haven't succeeded in doing that yet.


Here's a pic I found: Windows XP in VMware with Unity, on Linux Desktop.

My test is taken under:

OS: Linux Mint 4.0 (Ubuntu Based)

Laptop: Gateway T1616 (See how to drive everything out of box)
Desktop PC: Dell Dimension E510

It's really easy stuff.

1 Download VMware workstation, whose 6.5 Beta version is under testing. And don't forget the Serial Number given on the webpage.

2 Install VMware:

cd the_path_where_VMware_lies (e.g /home/home)
tar xzvf VMware-workstation-e.x.p-84113.i386.tar.gz
cd vmware-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

3 Imput the Serial Number. You will find the option in Help menu.

4 Build a new virtual machine. Once VMware starts, press the button "Creat a new virtual machine" under the Home tab. Leave everything as default on the first page, go next until the third page, where you choose the edition of windows which you are going to install. Name the system and choose its path on the next page. The next thing is to set the space for it. Let's give it 5GB (4 might be work ,too, but no guarantee here). Then you will be end up getting a virtual machine with 256MB memory, NAT network interface with the host system, and a share to all the DVD Rom,USB Controller,etc. It is actually just a (or more) file(s) on your linux machine. It won't have any infuence to the host system besides consuming some space on the hard drive.

5 Install Windows on the virtual machine. Put your installation disc into the DVD/CD ROM, press "Power on this virtual machine" on the tab of your newly built "PC". Then you will find yourself in regular Windows installation process. I didn't meet any difficulty during this step. VMware tells me that the Webcam/Sound/Wireless on Gateway T1616 all work for the virtual PC when Windows first starts.

6 Install VMware Tools. Make sure the virtual PC is on. Choose from menu VM-Install VMware Tools. The virtual machine will start a process installing a series of things. Just press next or OK if it stops anyhow. After this is done. You will find the virtual machine working faster. And you may also want to reset the resolution of the virtual screen.

7 Download iTunes, save the installation file in a certain place in the host system (linux), say, PATH_A.

8 Set the shared folder for the host PC and virtual PC. Poweroff the virtual PC first (Ctrl + Alt to get the mouse out of the virtual PC, for those who hasn't figured out). Press "Edit Virtual machine settings". Click the option tab, choose "Shared folders". Put "Always enabled" on the right. Press Add, put a name in Name, say, PATH_B. And put PATH_A in "Host Path". Press OK.

9 Install iTunes. Start the virtual machine. The Installation file for iTunes will be in the path "\\.host\Shared Folders\PATH_B".

10 Plug in iPod nano 3rd generation, the virtual machine should be able to detect it automatically, just as it happens in a real machine. Actually if you use the "Exlusive Mode", it feels exactly the same as if the system is on your host machine.


Since then, iPod nano 3rd generation, though still evil, is again available for me!

Linux Mint Working on Gateway T1616

The idea of the Ubuntu - Based distro Linux Mint is to make things work easier. But for the users of linux-unfriendly Gateway T1616 users, which includes me, things are always a little more complicated than it suppose to be. And Linux Mint is not an exception. Here's how I made this distro work to meet my basic requirements.

1. Video Card This turned out to be the easiest step. After the installation, there was a notification on the taskbar asking me to use a restricted dirver. I checked that driver and Linux Mint downloaded and installed the ATI accelerated graphics driver automatically. After this, I rebooted the laptop and got the video card working perfectly.
2. Wireless Card As I've wrote in another post, I download RTL8187B driver for Windows, unpack it. There were the rtl8187b driver for windows 98 as well as other windows versions on their own folder. I went to Daryna-Administrations-Windows Wireless Drivers , Clicked "Install", found the .ini file in the folder for the rtl8187b driver of windows 98, clicked OK. Then the wireless card started working. One thing to recommend is, the default network-manager in Linux Mint (Ubuntu) is a little dull in detecting the wireless signals. Usually it doesn't match the result of "lwlist scan". And wicd is the solution. Go to Daryna-Administration-Synaptic Package Manager. Choose Settings-Repositories, press the button New. Fill in the text area like this: URL: http://apt.wicd.net/ Distribution: gutsy Section(s): extras And then press OK. And you will be able to install wicd with synaptic (sudo aptitude install wicd). When you do that, you'll find network-manager removed automatically. Don't panic, you can install it back whenever you like. To finish the installation of wicd, you need to go to Daryna-Preference-Sessions, Press Add, Fill in name with Wicd, Command with /opt/wicd/tray.py, and fill in Comment with anything you like. Next time you start gnome, you will find wicd in the taskbar at start.
3. Sound Card It took me quite a while to search with Google, and the result is unexpectedly simple. All you need is type the following command in a terminal:

   sudo aptitude install linux-backports-modules-generic

   I doubt that this works with Ubuntu , too.
4. Webcam For the scarce of webcam application on linux, I haven't found a universal way to fully drive the built-in webcam up. But it works properly for skype 2.0 by default. Which, according to my previous test on Ubuntu, indicates that it works with kopete, too.

Having all this done, I've got this laptop working with Linux Mint. But there's still a problem. Sometime when restarted, the system stops in the middle of the whole process forever. To "restart" it, I need to turn the machine down and start it again. Do you have the same problem with Linux Mint & Gateway T1616?

Linux Mint 4.0 + ndiswrapper works on Gateway T1616: rtl8187b

This is an instruction to new Linux Mint users who have a Gateway T1616 Laptop, if you are using Ubuntu and the wireless doesn't work, you may want to try Native Linux Driver for RTL8187B. "Linux Mint is an Ubuntu - based distribution whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components. It also adds a custom desktop and menus, several unique configuration tools, and a web-based package installation interface. Linux Mint is compatible with Ubuntu software repositories." Gateway T1616, which is not a very linux-friendly laptop, has the wireless card RTL8187b. I found that it is very easy to make the wireless work out of the box with Linux Mint 4.0 . First, you need to download the RTL8187B driver for Windows. Notice that there are several drivers in the package, and the one for windows 98 works just fine. So uncompress that to some where on the disk. Then you install the driver with ndiswrapper, which is in the system by default. To be specific, go to Daryna-Administrations-Windows Wireless Drivers. Click on "Install" button, choose the path where you unpacked the Win98 driver, and you will find the .inf file highlighted, click OK. Now you should have the wireless working properly. If there are wireless signals around, you should be able to find them listed by clicking the network reminder on the right of the taskbar. You may also try iwconfig in a terminal and you should find wlan0 up and running. The last thing to do is to add ndiswrapper to a new line in the start-up module list, which is in /etc/modules And that's when you start enjoying wireless.

3D Ubuntu 7.10 with Compiz, AWN and Screenlets

1 Get Funky 3D Effect From Compiz Fusion 1.1 Install Compiz

sudo apt-get update & sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install compiz compiz-gnome compiz-fusion-* compizconfig-settings-manager libcompizconfig-backend-gconf

1.2 Set Compiz Fusion Effects

System-Preference-Advanced Desktop Effects Settings

2 Install Avant Window Navigator - the Nice And Efficient Dock 2.1 Edit /etc/apt/sources.list Add following lines into /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator

2.2 Install Avant Window Navigator (AWN) Use following command:

wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/reacocard.asc sudo apt-key add reacocard.asc rm reacocard.asc sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr awn-core-applets-bzr

2.3 Make AWN Run When Login Go to

System-Preference-Sessions

Click

Add

Fill The Table as

Name: AWN Command: avant-window-navigator Comment: Run Avant Window Navigator (or anything)

2.4 Add launchers into the dock Go to

System-Preference-AWN Manager-Applets

Pick up the launchers you like,click the left arrow to add it into the list in the left.Drag them with mouse to whatever order you want.If you know python, you can write your own, with the help of the included example. 3 Install Screenlets - Cute Mini-desktop-apps. 3.1 Install screenlets via apt

sudo apt-get install screenlets

3.2 Add screenlets to your desktop Go to

System-Preference-Screenlets

Choose a Application and tick

Enable/Disable

to run it. Tick

Automatically start on login

if you like. Here's what you get:

rtl8187b linux native driver works on Ubuntu

Update: This essay is really sort of outdated. Nevertheless I has not been keeping track on this native driver. One good approach to get things work is to use a more "wrapped" distro, where ndiswrapper + windows driver works. And then "upgrade" it into the original distro you desired by changing the repository settings or whatever. For those who desire Ubuntu, I recommend Linux Mint. I used to try getting rtl8187b wireless card work on ubuntu by using ndiswrapper,everything seemed fine with this method except that it WASN't ACTURALLY WORKING. What happened was, iwconfig said that there's a wlan0,iwlist scan did find several signal around -- but they never change.It seems that the wireless card only worked when the machine started up, when it discovered something by then and kept returning it to me later. Things were the same when I use the graphic interface, of course. I turned to #ubuntu@irc.ubuntu.org for help and met Word1983. He gave me a page from google, from which I traced to this modified driver for rtl8187b. Here're several steps to drive rtl8187b up with this driver: 1 downland the driver. 2 extract it to a folder.Since we will keep this folder,you'd better choose a good place for it.

tar xzvf rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz -C GoooPlace/ cd GoodPlace

3 run the script makedrv with sudo.Don't panic on those compiler warnings,as long as you don't see anything like "error", the driver might not have been nice coded, but it will work.

sudo ./makedrv

4 run the other script wlan0up with sudo

sudo ./wlan0up

If nothing went wrong, you should find a wlanX in the result of iwconfig,in case you may have tried to get the rtl8187b wireless card worked, X varies from 0 to ?.

iwconfig

Then you may go

iwlist scan

The card will detect signals surrounded then.Which means that it started working properly. PS:You need to run sudo wlan0up everytime you need wireless.You may want to make a shortcut for it on your desktop or home folder.

Login as root in Ubuntu

It's been believed that root is not available in ubuntu,and sudo is only way to get the authority.But this is not exactly right. I accidently found out the way to get a #

sudo su

Check it out!

Editing PDF file in Ubuntu Linux

There are several ways available to edit pdf on Ubuntu linux. I've found two direct tool for editing pdf: flpsed and pdfedit ,there are debs for both of them on the internet. The second way is to open pdf file with GIMP and add things into it page by page.Save the pages each and combine them to one pdf file again.

Ubuntu Installation On Gateway T1616

For convenience,I installed i386 edition instead of 64bit.Which happened 1 mouth ago.But for Gateway T1616, there were two main problem after the basic installation: 1

Wireless doesn't work

Here's the result of lspci for wireless :

08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)

The way to make it work should be:

1 Install ndiswrapper :

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper

2 Download the driver of wireless card for Windows

for Gateway,we need the driver rtl8187b Downloaded. And use ndiswrapper to install the driver: ndiswrapper -i xxx.inf Load ndiswrapper by sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

VERY IMPORTANT: If you have a Vista on the laptop,the wireless will simply NOT work,I don't know why,but after my OpenSUSE accidentally disabled the Vista,which came with Gateway T1616,the wireless magically started to work! Update: This method works not very well, if this is true for you, you may want to try the Native Driver for RTL8187B 2

Sound Card Doesn't work

The solution turned out to be very simple:install the package alsa-tools

sudo apt-get install alsa-tools

Then make sure that every thing displayed in alsamixer is NOT muted.

alsamixer

Use key left and right to switch between different column,us key m to voice the muted ones\ After these two things, Gateway T1616 basicly functioned completely.Except that the mic and web camera is still not working. I'll working on it~~

Vista Removed,Ubuntu Wireless worked!

What's the difference between secrets and mysteries? The former are boring while the latter are fun. I installed openSUSE on my laptop.For some unknown reason it disabled vista,which came with the Gateway T1616,and was the only OS on which the wireless worked(Yes,it was in good condition,typically slow,and I seldom used it). Before that,I've tried every method I can find from google to get wireless work on ubuntu,but it somehow didn't work. However,that's no longer true after Vista disappeared! Microsoft always surprise us!