Previously, I had used an older, headless box with Xubuntu to do the job and used a VNC server to set up a session I could connect to which ran the needed task. This time I tried to use the built-in Remote Desktop feature.

Unfortunately, I discovered a problem with this approach. The VNC client would connect ok and appear to take input from the remote client, but the screen would never update or refresh on the client correctly.

This appears to be a bug with the nvidia restricted drivers (which I am using) and the fancy graphic transitions. It apparently doesn’t “damage” the underlying X server, causing the VNC to never issue a screen refresh to the client. While this article describes it for 9.04, it applies for 9.10 as well. I simply turned off the visual effects as described in the article and my remote desktop started working correctly again! Yay!

The reason I wrote this article and posted it is because it took a while before I was able to find a solution for it. Google ultimatey found the answer after enough iterations of searching, but not everyone has that kind of patience. Hopefully, someone out there will find this article useful.

Comments

• 24 November 2009, Eduardo Lara writes: Thanks. Now my VNC is working again.
• 3 December 2009, Shtirlic writes: Thx, found your article by "vnc ubuntu 9.10 not working properly" in first result
• 11 December 2009, crap writes: this shit works in ubuntu 8.04. why the fuck can't they fix it for this latest rls. grrrrrrrr
• 14 December 2009, Richard Gabriel writes: Unbelieavable! Many thanks for this article. I've spent more than a hour finding out why VNC does not work.
• 14 December 2009, Richard Gabriel writes: Excellent! Many thanks - I've spent more than an hour to investigate why VNC does not work... Is is a problem of the 64-bit driver only? Did you report a bug somewhere?
• 14 December 2009, PhoneBoy writes: Not 100% sure, except that it seems to have been a bug for a while. It's not clear if the bug is in nvidia's proprietary code or in Ubuntu's code.

Related Posts

• Windows XP Remote Desktop
• Use VNC To Remote Display Your VMware VMs
• Is Linux Right For You?
• uTorrent + Linux + VNC = Remote Bittorrenting
• How Many Laptops Do I Need?

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The first issue I encountered with OpenSUSE 11.1 was that I needed a DVD to do the installation! Since my iBook only has a CD drive, I thought I might be out. However, they have a “mini CD” that downloads everything off the Internet.

The instructions for network installation weren’t very specific, but I was able to figure out what choices to make. The installation process, after the initial load of the installer, was graphical and fairly straightforward. A high-speed Internet connection is definitely recommended since pretty much everything is downloaded–2.5 gigabytes of data!

Or so I thought. I should tell you something at this point that I did something that complicated matters a bit.

The power plug inside the iBook has been flaky for a while. You wiggle it and it acts as if it is not plugged in. Since the OpenSUSE installation process kept dying as a result of this, it was time to fix it. Unfortunately, like any laptop, this requires major surgery. Since I had to do major surgery anyway, I figured I’d upgrade the hard drive, which on this vintage computer, requires major surgery.

Following these steps on iFixit, I was able to replace the hard drive with a 20 gigabyte. Still not that big, but it’s bigger than the 10 that was in there. I was also able to fix the janky power connector inside the iBook with a soldering iron.

After all that, I proceeded to do the install of OpenSUSE, which thanks to my work with the soldering iron, now was running smoothly without the computer powering off mid-way through the process. It took a while, between the slowness of the computer and the fact it had to download 2.5 gigs of stuff, but it eventually completed.

When the system rebooted, it was still booting off the CD instead of the hard drive. I figured that the boot manager wasn’t getting loaded. I read up on how this works and figured ok, lilo didn’t get installed on the drive. I booted into rescue mode and did various things to try and fix it.

During the process of trying to fix this, I booted off the CD a couple of times and told the boot program to load the installed OS off the hard drive. The install process finished and KDE loaded without a hitch. I didn’t spend too much time messing around, but apps were loading and it looked like I had a usable system–except it wouldn’t boot off the hard drive!

I eventually figured out what was going wrong: the drive I put into the iBook originally came out of a PC. Guess what? PCs use a different partitioning scheme than Macs. I booted again into rescue mode, manually partitioned the drive with pdisk, and then rebooted the installer. In the installer, I had to choose the custom partitioning mode. I made sure all the partitions were set up properly, would be configured to mount in the right place (or not mount at all), and be formatted.

After answering all the questions–again–the installation process ended up with a system that boots off the hard drive! Pretty much everything worked right out of the box, including graphics (it defaulted to 1024x768x15), and WiFi. Flash video support is a bit sketchy, but it always has been on non-Intel platforms. Not that this machine would be particularly fast at it, either.

All in all, it was a relatively painless experience compared to installing Ubuntu.

Related Posts

• Teaching an old iBook New Tricks the Ubuntu Way
• Ubuntu–on an Apple iBook
• My iBook’s Long, Strange Trip to Mac OS X 10.4.9
• Reinstalling Computers
• What Is It About The Mac?

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While I know that Adobe Flash and AIR won’t ever be supported on the PowerPC chips that run in a lot of the older Macs, the size of this iBook puts it real close to the “netbook” category. Since I don’t see myself spending $400-$500 on a new computer anytime soon, why not try and repurpose one I already have?

My expectations for this PowerPC G3 with 576mb of RAM and 10gb of disk aren’t high. I just want something with a reasonable keyboard that has WiFi and runs a web browser. It’s got all that and the current versions of Ubuntu (8.10 as I write this) will support the wireless (which it didn’t back in 6.06, which was when I took this video), at least in theory. Why not give it a try? Details after the jump.

The first step is getting the Ubuntu distribution. It’s not officially supported anymore, according to the PowerPCFAQ for Ubuntu, but the community does maintain downloads for PowerPC Ubuntu. This is one time where downloading the ISO using Bittorrent is highly recommended as it is likely to be much faster than the straight download.

After burning the CD and sticking it into the iBook, I powered the iBook up, holding down the ‘C’ key to tell the Mac to boot off CD. The installation, however, could not find the CDROM! Fortunately, it’s a known issue with a relatively simple workaround: switch to another console, type in modprobe ide-scsi, and try detecting the CDROM again. Sure enough, it found the CDROM.

The next hiccup was minor: it was able to detect both network the wired and wireless adapters. However, during the installation process, WPA does not appear to be supported. Hopefully, it supports WPA once I’ve installed Ubuntu, but for now, I selected Ethernet and pressed onward.

One thing I noticed about the installation process: it offered encryption, both at the (mostly entire) disk level as well as at the home directory level! I only opted for the directory-level encryption for my user. I’ll have to see how well it works.

A few hours later, I booted up and the screen looked like someone sat on the screen. Turns out that’s a rather common problem easily solved by editing /etc/yaboot.conf, replacing both append lines with:

append="nosplash"

To solve the “low resolution mode” problem when the graphic login attempts to start, I had to modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf with a couple of lines (bolded below):

Section "Device"
Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
BusID           "PCI:0:16:0"
Driver          "fbdev"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier      "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier      "Default Screen"
Monitor         "Configured Monitor"
Device          "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Two more problems: sound and the fact I couldn’t actually start any applications. Sound is easy to fix, add the following to /etc/modules:

snd-powermac

To make it take effect without a reboot, execute the command sudo modprobe snd-powermac.

Finally, the most annoying bug I’ve found: I can’t start applications from the GNOME Desktop! Apparently, a library was compiled with the wrong flags. The instructions for fixing it are documented here, and since they break with any update where I forget to uncheck updating the library, this basically means I have to remember to uncheck this library every time I update–not likely–or not do any updates at all–also not likely. End result: Ubuntu PPC is unusuable.

Next, we’ll try this with OpenSUSE to see if we fare any better.

Comments

• 13 January 2009, Jonathan Greene writes: I tried as well on a 15" Powerbook G4 and also failed ... thought it would be a great use for a spare machine that was just sitting in a drawer. I went back and forward with ISO versions but never got the disk to work. My foo was not as good as yours and at least you got further down the road ... Good luck!
• 14 April 2009, New Basement Tapes writes: anta Ubuntu Pocket Guide Available as a Free Download (lifehacker.com) Download Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference (blogs.vinuthomas.com) Six Best Portable Operating Systems [Hive Five] (lifehacker.com) Talking Community With Ubuntu's Jono Bacon (ostatic.com)Teaching an old iBook New Tricks the Ubuntu Way(phoneboy.com) VirtualBox 2: How To Pass Through USB Devices To Guests On An Ubuntu 8.10 Host (howtoforge.com)

Related Posts

• Ubuntu–on an Apple iBook
• Teaching an old iBook New Tricks the OpenSUSE Way
• Ubuntu on an iBook
• How Many Laptops Do I Need?
• My iBook’s Long, Strange Trip to Mac OS X 10.4.9

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Why are they doing this? It was a publicity stunt. The folks at Codeweavers challenged George Bush to do something to improve our lot in his last months of his presidency. Whether he was ultimately responsible for gas prices plummeting a buck over the past month or not is irrelevant, but the folks at Codeweavers saw that one of their goals was meant and they are keeping to their word.

The Codeweavers Crossover product is a commercial version of Wine, which is an open-source project that allows Windows executables to run on non-Windows systems. It’s not perfect, since it is a cleanroom implementation of the Windows API and they haven’t got bug-for-bug compatibility yet. However, it does run some specific applications like Microsoft Office reasonably well. It also runs Internet Explorer, which is useful in and of itself.

The main thing you get with Crossover is a much nicer installation process for Windows applications. It knows about the most common applications and is able to configure itself for an optimal installation. It makes the application installation process a bit easier.

The other amazing part about about this is that you also get a year of support with this freebie. This entitles you to technical support as well as a year of updates on the product. Quite righteous!

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• Crossover Office 4.0 Works On my Gentoo Box
• Crossover Linux and Crossover Mac Go 6.0
• Crossover Office 3.0
• Dancing with the Dark Side
• Michael Robertson Ways in on Steve Jobs Anti-DRM Piece

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The press release goes into how well-suited SightSpeed video is for these lower-end notebooks. I can attest to just how little CPU horsepower is needed to run SightSpeed based on personal experience. While you can sometimes get great video from Skype with the High Quality video, the SightSpeed video experience is far more consistent under lesser CPU and bandwidth conditions!

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to a downloadable version of the Linux SightSpeed so I can test it out for myself.

Comments

• 16 September 2008, Digital Media Update writes: them. I'm glad that I haven't bought one yet, because I'll be looking very seriously at the Dell mini-notes now, and I probably wouldn't even have considered them before. Giving her SightSpeed on top of everything else really makes a difference." (3)Dameon Welch-Abernathy of The PhoneBoy Blog-- "[SightSpeed's] press release goes into how well-suited SightSpeed video is for these lower-end notebooks. I can attest to just how little CPU horsepower is needed to run SightSpeed based on personal experience. While you can sometimes get great

Related Posts

• Why I’m Not Using SightSpeed to Video Blog–Yet
• SightSpeed Kicking Butt, Taking Names
• My Suggestions to Improve SightSpeed’s Video Blogging
• SightSpeed Vs. Skype: No Contest
• SightSpeed 5.0 Enhanced — In Video

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Image via Wikipedia

For the second day in a row, my internal email at Nokia causes me to drop what I’m doing and blog. And this, my friends, is some news. BIG news.

According to a press release, Nokia intends to acquire the remaining shares of Symbian that it does not already own. It already owns a controlling interest, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get the rest of them. Of course, there’s also the pesky EU approvals.

That in itself is big news, as it makes it far easier for Nokia to make operating system-level changes. But that’s only part of the endgame. Nokia plans to turn over control of this newly acquired intellectual property over to the Symbian Foundation, which will then license it–royalty free–to members of the Symbian Foundation. Members of this foundation include Motorola, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, several mobile operators–including AT&T!–and chipmakers like Broadcom, STMicroelectronics, and TI.

And the final endgame here is open-sourcing the Symbian platform entirely under the Eclipse Public License. That means not only the device manufacturers can have at it, but everyone can! This is planned to happen within the next two years, but we all know how these things go.

So what’s going to make up the Symbian Foundation in terms of a base? Symbian, S60, some parts of UIQ and MOAP(S). While things will start fragmented, the idea is to create a unified, open-source platform based on a system that a lot of people already know and love (or hate).

It’s going to be some time before we see the results of all this hard work. Clealy, though, this is a response to Android, and based on what I’ve heard about Android, it will be more open source than Android is. It’s also a relatively known platform, versus Android, which isn’t even shipping yet!

How will this factor into responding the iPhone? How does Maemo fit into this strategy? Hard to say at this point. Things just got a bit more interesting in mobile platforms, though, and it’s a great time to be a part of Nokia, even if I work for a part of the company that has nothing to do with this work

Comments

• 24 June 2008, Is Open Source Symbian Coming Soon? « nokiAAddict.com writes: [...] Full Story.. http://www.phoneboy.com/2317/nokia-to-own-symbian-then-set-it-free [...]
• 24 June 2008, Turulcsirip - tapir writes: [...] lesz a symbian? http://www.phoneboy.com/2317/nokia-to-own-symbian-then-set-it-free « előző | tapir — 2008. 06. 24. [...]
• 24 June 2008, spg writes: it would be really interesting if it gets ported to other smartphones by third parties. some of the coolest(yet less expensive than nokia) hardware out there runs windows mobile; but would be even cooler if symbian apps could be run. just the whole idea of replacing the OS on a phone would be cool.
• 24 June 2008, hot-iphones writes: unknownwrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt Related Posts. SIP Client for Symbian OS? Meme: Symbian History; MP3s on Symbian; Podcast client for Symbian? Why Unlocked GSM Phones Are The Way To Go. Creative Commons License This work
• 29 June 2008, PhoneBoy writes: @spg The Chinese clones of Nokia handsets will suddenly be a lot more credible clones--they'll run a compatible OS even versus running Windows Mobile today :)

Related Posts

• SIP Client for Symbian OS?
• SIP on Nokia N73 and N93 Not Functional
• Why Unlocked GSM Phones Are The Way To Go
• MP3s on Symbian
• Podcast client for Symbian?

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One problem with the downstairs computers is that they all, without exception, have web filtering software on them. I am not under the delusion that they are a substitute for parental oversight–there’s a reason the kids computers are in a public room–but it’s nice to have something around to catch most accidental exposures to inappropriate material. Let’s face it, when the kids are old enough, if they want to get around the filters, they’ll figure out a way.

Meanwhile, I occasionally use the kids computers. Mostly it’s because I like to go downstairs when the kids are trying to go to sleep. It’s also nice to have a change of environment. However, the web filters end up creating problems for me when I try to, say, read my RSS feeds and people link to the latest cool video on YouTube. Or I want to check what’s happening on Plurk or Twitter. Unfortunately, it means fighting with the web filter.

Now I suppose I cold buy a “better” web filter rather than rely on K9 Web Protection from Blue Coat, but I like the filter. It generally works, it’s free, does a fairly good job of catching inappropriate or questionable websites, and doesn’t try and do everything. It also helps that their CEO used to be in charge of the part of Nokia I worked for many, many moons ago, and I thought he was a nice guy.

The solution: a portable computing environment embedded in a flash drive. I could dual boot the computers, but that creates other problems. The flash drive solution is clean.

Linux is the only feasible OS one can install on a flash drive–at least easily. There are actually a number of different distributions you can install on a USB flash drive, many of which are featured–complete with step-by-step instructions on how to install it–on a site called Pen Drive Linux.

I wasted an evening on trying to get Ubuntu (along with various derivatives) installed on a flash drive, but ran into a problem where the distribution was failing to boot because it was trying to find the non-existent floppy drive on this IBM ThinkPad T43 I am using.

What ended up working the best for me, at least, was Slax. It is based on Slackware Linux, which has been around forever. It was one of the first Linux distributions I started playing with in the mid-1990s. It includes a number of modules, including a relatively recent build of Firefox 2 complete with Adobe Flash integrated. It’s not set up the most optimally out of the box–for example, the default user runs as root, which is almost as bad as the default Windows behavior–but with a little bit of hacking, it works just fine without needing to run as root.

I now have my own environment complete with some local storage on a older 1 gigabit flash drive. I can stick it into any computer that is able to boot off of USB, and it should give me access to the Internet and a few other programs. Works pretty well for me.

photo credit: boredzo

Comments

• 5 July 2008, PaulK writes: Hey Dameon- Long time no see!!! I was just playing with this myself and got Ubuntu Hardy Heron to boot off flash drive using unetbootin. Nice gui & works in Linux or Windows: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ There's even a special version for eee but she won't let me touch it ;-) http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/index.php5?title=Get_Ubuntu_Eee I am heading north next month. I will ping you with details. Take care -PaulK

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• Sandisk Cruzer Mini is a POS
• Booting Damn Small Linux off a USB Key Finally!
• My Own Linux Distro?
• How Many Flash Drives Do You Have?

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KDE is based on the Qt toolkit, which was designed by Trolltech. It has had a rather sorted history within the open source community. It was originally a “free to use” license versus being the licensed under a proper open source license. This caused huge rifts within the open source community, some of which went away when Trolltech licensed their Qt Toolkit under the GPL.

Nokia uses a fair amount of open source within their products. The press release suggests that Qt will make it’s way to both Series 40 and S60 devices, further enriching these platforms with open source goodness. It’s nice to hear that they plan on continuing to license Trolltech technology under both commercial and open source licenses as well.

Comments

• 28 January 2008, Blog » Blog Archive » KDE versus GNOME Now A Dogfood Question writes: [...] PhoneBoy wrote an interesting post today on KDE versus GNOME Now A Dogfood QuestionHere’s a quick excerptCreative Commons License This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a. [...]
• 28 January 2008, ScottRD writes: If I'm not mistaken Maemo's Hildon is based on Gnome so you can be considered to be eating your dogfood either way, at least for the near future. :)
• 28 January 2008, PhoneBoy writes: @scottrd you're right about that, but unless Hildon is used outside of Maemo, which I don't think it is, it's still not a question of which dogfood. ;)

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• Gentoo Linux Part 3, Still going…
• Slumming in Enlightenment
• A Little More on Dapper Drake
• Cats and KDE 3.2
• A Sipura in Gnome’s Clothing

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One simple reason I want to do this: the kids aren’t exactly “gentle” with the DVDs. For example, this Curious George DVD is insanely scratched and “stops” after a certain point in the movie in both our home and car DVD player.

Prior to trying to make a copy of the DVD, I wanted to make sure the DVD was going to work. I used a program called Handbrake on my Mac to turn Curious George into something I could watch on the computer. I figured if it could go through that process and result in a functioning movie, a copy of the DVD could likely be made. Sure enough, I got about a 1 gigabyte mp4 file that plays perfectly fine.

I have a Linux machine running Xubuntu 7.10 with dual DVD burners and a small supply of dual-layer DVD blanks. Should be easy to make a copy of a DVD on this gear, right?

It actually is fairly easy, except for one small step: installing the CSS libraries. Because the CSS libraries are restricted due to reasons I don’t claim to understand or support, they are not included in the default Ubuntu distributions.

Once that was loaded, k3b was able to utilize the libdvdcss2 libraries and allow me to make a legal, backup copy of my DVD. I can’t remember if it’s included in Xubuntu or if I loaded it previously, but it was about as easy as it gets on Linux.

I can’t help but feel like I am doing something “wrong” in order to do something I am legally entitled to do: make a backup copy of something I purchased. Why can’t this be easier? Any insights are welcome here.

Comments

• 15 November 2007, Martin Schultz writes: Using DVD shrink in windows this is a piece of cake. It copies the DVD so regular unprotected Video-ts files you can burn with any dvd burner, it can even shrink (compress) a dual layer DVD to fit on a single lay disc.
• 15 November 2007, Ricky writes: I do this, too, somewhat, though frankly, I've found it easier to simply download the movie via torrent rather than go through the hassle of ripping it. Isn't that sad? It has to do with combatting piracy, and all that jazz.
• 15 November 2007, Irfon-Kim Ahmad writes: *Is* it hard, or did you choose a hard approach? It seems like Popcorn can do this on the Mac trivially, and someone mentioned an app that can do it trivially on Windows.
• 18 November 2007, PhoneBoy writes: @martin: I don't use Windows for this stuff. Next. @ricky: Bittorrent FTW. @irfan: I ended up doing it in Linux because I have--or had when I wrote this--two DVD drives in this machine. I didn't know about Popcorn on the Mac. Hm...

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• Speaking of Toys…
• Travelling with my Nokia Communicator
• Another Travel Day with my Nokia Communicator
• Other Reasons LifeBlog Isn’t Popular–With Me Anyway

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• Slide-out keyboard (N800 has no keyboard)
• Camera isn’t on a pop-out cylinder, but on the outside
• Built-in GPS
• 2gb of internal storage (versus an SD slot)
• Different battery, but same capacity

It is quite the device. I can tell you that the N810 software (OS2008), which also runs on the N800, is a definite step-up from the previous version (OS2007). While I’m playing with OS2008 now, thanks to being a Nokia employee and knowing the right people, the rest of you will have to wait until it ships.

Meanwhile, the folks at Laptop Magazine thought the N810 was pretty keen when they saw it at the recent CTIA conference in San Francisco. They awarded it Best Overall Device at CTIA. That’s funny, because it’s not a mobile phone. Then again, with Skype and Gizmo Project installed, you can make and receive phone calls on it.

Comments

• 31 October 2007, I Organize » Blog Archive » Nokia N810 Wins Best Overall Product at CTIA writes: [...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]

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• Mauku on the Nokia N810: Quite A Match

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Fortunately for me, I usually browse with Firefox and the NoScript extension–on my Mac. Needless to say it didn’t do anything to my machine when I ran across it. I personally recommend browsing the Internet with that combination. Or, if you’re stuck on using IE, disable active scripting.

Anyway, with the help of the various editors at CW, the malicious ad was tracked down and removed from the CW network. There was much rejoicing.

Meanwhile, you can safely look at the following articles I wrote this past week:

• Airports Charging For Power (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Skype 1.4 For Linux Now Available (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Alaska Airlines To Bring WiFi To Planes (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Cubic Telecom’s CEO Admits To Errors (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Sushi-Rolling Machine (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Jangl Partners With Fubar (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Universal Power Adapter (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Mobivox Gets 11 Million In Series A Funding (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Vringo Wins MIPCON’s Mobile TV & Internet Award (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Connecting The Islands Of VoIP (From The VoIP Weblog)
• White LED Lights Coming! (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• T-Mobile Being Sued For Locking Mobile Handsets (From The Gadgets Weblog)

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• Officially Certifiable
• PhoneBoy’s Week That Was 21 October 2007
• This Week in PhoneBoy 7 October 2007
• PhoneBoy’s Week That Was 28 October 2007

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The term “iri-computing” is inspired by the term I’ve heard Ken Rutkowski say on World Tech Roundup: bi-computing. That means using both PC and Mac. Well, folks, I’m happy to say I’m tri-computing. I use Windows, Mac, and Linux.

I tried using the Mac Mini as a Synergy server. It did not work well, at all. The mouse was very jerky and jumpy over on the “client” machine. However, the Mac Mini works great as a Synergy client.

Things have changed quite a bit since I did this last. Ubuntu is nearly releasing Gutsy Gibbon–and it looks pretty good. The Mac Mini hasn’t changed much, but the work PC certainly has. It means a small amount of reconfiguring of Synergy, but that’s par for the course.

Now I’ve got the best of all worlds: Linux for general web functions (works good, even on older hardware like this IBM T23 laptop), Mac for multimedia/iTunes, and Windows for the work stuff. And I get to dig into Gutsy Gibbon a little more while I’m at it. Not a bad way to work.

Comments

• 3 October 2007, Mowdolwis.Com » Back to Tri-Computing For A Bit writes: [...] Matus wrote an interesting post today on Back to Tri-Computing For A BitHere’s a quick [...]

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The fact of the matter is, I’m on the hook this week to present at this week’s WSTPA meeting regarding Ubuntu Linux. Because I don’t think PowerPoint presentations are all that useful, I’m doing a couple of different things:

• Demonstrate the various tasks that people do on Windows and Ubuntu.
• Give people ample opportunity to try Ubuntu Linux out for themselves on a variety of laptops.

I have a number of older laptops that I have essentially “recycled” from my work laptops. Mostly IBM Thinkpads, though I do have an incredibly old Toshiba Tecra that’s running XUbuntu on it. The nice thing about that is they can see just how well it runs on all this older hardware.

It’s possible this presentation, such that it is, might end up on BKAT (Kitsap County’s public access TV channel) and/or the Internet. Who knows. But this presentation is why I am needing lots of laptops.

Comments

• 26 September 2007, The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] How Many Laptops Do I Need? Filed under: linux, phoneboy - 18 Sep 2007 0:01 [...]

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• California, Here I Come

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Meanwhile, I’ve recently swapped out wireless cards in the kids computers for a Linksys WRT54G running DD-WRT to add to my WiFi mesh. The wireless cards were not coming up on boot and required a bit of manual fiddling to get the computers online. Now they just plug in via Ethernet into the router and the router handles the WiFi part of it. Much more reliable, it seems.

However, the WRE54G I was also using as part of this WDS mesh seemed to “disappear” after deplying that WRT54G. I thought: hey, maybe I could use this WRE54G as an access point of sorts.

I dug up my PCI to PC-card adapter and stuffed it into a Linux server I keep running. I slapped in an old Orinoco WiFi card in it, configured a DHCP server on it, associated it with the WRE54G. Instant access point.

The access point is wide open–i.e. no encryption, but does not go to the Internet. It certainly could, but I’m not allowing it for the moment. If my son thinks I’m going to allow him to touch the Internet from a handheld device without direct supervision, he’s out of his mind. By keeping it from connecting to the Internet, him and his friends should be able to use their DS to play against each other. Well, as soon as he earns enough money to replace his DS anyway.

Comments

• 24 September 2007, The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] WRE54G as an Access Point? Filed under: wifi, linux - 12 Sep 2007 0:01 [...]
• 24 November 2007, Wre54g Access - Dogpile Web Search writes: [...] $40 - $250 in 7 stores Sponsored by: winbuyer.com/ [Found on Ads by Google] 10. WRE54G as an Access Point? I slapped in an old Orinoco WiFi card in it, configured a DHCP server on it, associated it with [...]

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• WiFi has hit my neighborhood

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The first thing I tested was Adobe Flash. What better way to test this than to head over to YouTube to watch the DDR Remix of Chocolate Rain. In Freespire, it played right away. In Ubuntu, it would not play until I installed Adobe Flash. Fortunately, I was able to click on the “additional plugins” bar in Firefox, Flash was presented, and I was able to install it. At least getting it there was easy.

I pretty much had the same results with Ubuntu and Freespire with a number of different files I tested with: mp4, m4v (both video), m4a (AAC), and mp3. In the case of Ubuntu, it recognized it couldn’t play the file, but offered to do a codec search. In each case, it found the codec it needed, presented a warning that I might need a license to use said software, and installed the software without a hitch. In Freespire, it just played.

Given that Ubuntu tries to distribute only open-source software, with the exception of “binary blobs” for hardware drivers, Ubuntu has significantly improved the end user experience for actually getting the proprietary bits of software–namely the multimedia codecs–needed to function in the real world. Freespire would prefer to distribute only open-source software, but is a bit more pragmatic in it’s approach, including enough proprietary bits to function on the Internet.

Which distro wins? Freespire, if only because of Click and Run (CNR). CNR includes a number of applications, both free and paid. It makes it much easier to locate software you might want and install it. Either distribution would be a worthy addition to any home desktop, though.

Comments

• 3 September 2007, Dave Field writes: Freespire does indeed come packed full of codec goodness, however i do tend to feel that by selling its soul, the heart of the distro is gone, and I wonder if it will be around in 2 years..? I love reviews like this, because you are not testing like for like, Ubuntu has never said it has all the codecs loaded from the CD, the idea was to have a single Cd (in the days of Fedora and suse being DVD only installs, and you load on what you want. Over the years its added better ways to add the codecs you require, and lets be honest, 10 minutes with Automatix, and whats the real difference between the two packages? CnR ? oh do behave.. Also, 64bit Pc's are the future, and does freespire offer 64bit, with all those codecs? I think no.. Does Ubuntu? Oh, yes.. (i'm using it right now..) that being said, if i have any friends who are looking to move from the other OS, I have suggested Freespire 2.0, and they seem to be happy.. which all in all is a good thing.
• 3 September 2007, Debian-News.net - Debian News writes: [...] It makes it much easier to locate software you might want and install it.Read the short comparison hereQuote:I did it: I installed Freespire. Not on a real machine, but in VMware. Unlike certain OSes by [...]
• 4 September 2007, PhoneBoy writes: I think the main difference here is philosophy. They both try to make it as easy as possible within their respective philosophies. To most people, the whole "free as in beer" versus "free as in speech" thing is a non-issue. While I realize there is a difference, and I'm sure you can spend time educating people on those differences, most people don't really care. They just want a usable machine with usable software with a minimum of fuss.

Related Posts

• Freespire: Linux The Family Could Use?
• How Many Laptops Do I Need?
• Ubuntu–on an Apple iBook
• VMware Fusion 1.1
• Power PC Ubuntu Mini (Formerly Mac Mini)

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