The Smorgasbord

I’ve been using Ubuntu for years on my desktop workstation – about 5 years now in total. I’ve been through so many revisions of Ubuntu it’s not funny – and as we all know in the beginning upgrading wasn’t really all that fun (because you never knew what would happen).

Ubuntu as an OS has become more stable than ever – with months and months in between my reboots. I haven’t had a crash or lockup of any kind of 3+ years – but one thing really pissed me off about a year ago – the “Unity Bar”.

Ubuntu took it upon themselves to reword the desktop interface and paradigm as “they saw fit”, putting into place this rediculous left facing menu dockbar thing called the “unity bar” and this little icon on the top left to segregate all your apps into “media apps”, “internet apps”, and “all apps” categories.

This horrible interface has pissed off more people than I know because it just makes harder to find things. They might think it’s easier becase you can type in a few letters to find what you want – but you shouldn’t have to use your keyboard to find an app. You shouldn’t have to scroll through all your apps find it either.

One of the very first things I googled was “how to remove the unity bar in ubuntu” and come to find out (as part of the system) you really can’t. You can’t really replace it, or re-mix it, re-work it, you’re just stuck with that POS.

Today I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 and decided to check out the ubuntu software center to see what’s new – and low and behold there’s a system utility called “Cairo dock”. While it’s not really a replacement for the unity dock (and you still can’t remove it), it might be a good solution for you – it was kind of just what I was looking for (and I’ll tell you why).

First of all – fire up “ubuntu software center” and find “cairo dock” (under system utilities) and install it. Once installed you’ve have the option to run Open GL (Compiz like) version, or non Open GL. I love the Open GL version (uses very low system resources).

So – this is why I like the Cairo dock…it’s like the Macbook App bar (but better). I can’t show it here, but the left icon for the very leftmost icon is the “applications menu” which is exactly what you remember it to be (before the Unity dock bar came out). You have access to icons for programs you have open and most used programs, shortcuts, folders, and more.

You can even right click add / remove / modify any launchers on the Cairo dock, you can add custom applets, apply themes, and more! If you want to get your productivity back in your Ubuntu desktop – install Cairo dock!

I’m using Ubuntu 11.04 (upgrading from 10.04), so it’s time to setup Windows XP in Virtual Box. Virtual box is a piece of software originally created by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) that allows you to install an operating system “inside a box” on your computer’s desktop.

I use Ubuntu, so VirtualBox allows me to install WindowsXP in it’s own little window on my desktop (just like a browser), and you can install software, use your printer (or other USB devices), browser the web -as if it was another computer (inside your computer). You can install multiple snapshots and versions, like Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, you could even install Mac OS X, other versions of Linux, etc. I use Windows XP for Photoshop and my multi-function printer.

I came accros a weird problem today, since I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 I had to install WindowsXP for the first time in Virtual Box. The install went just fine until I had to “click F8 to continue” on the EULA screen. No matter what I did – the F8 just didn’t work at all the virtual box window. I’m using a Microsoft wireless comfort keyboard 4000.

I had to google a few things to figure this out, and that’s when I found that because my keyboard is a multimedia keyboard (a lot of Microsoft and Logitech keyboards are like this), they F keys are mapped to do different things (help, undo, redo, new, open, close, reply, fwd, send, etc.).

There’s actually a button I’ve never used in 20 years called “F lock”, and if you click that it turns off all the “extended capabilities” of your keyboard (same as a num lock or caps lock).

Just find that button on your keyboard as in the image above, and once you click it you should be able to return to the Virtual Box windows and click F8 to continue installing WinXP. Also, if you have problems with your F keys working on a Mac in OS X – like the tab key, scrolling, or other things – try the F lock for those as well.

Hope that helps!

We move computers around quite a bit in our house, and we sure have the gamut here. I have been using a Ubuntu Linux workstation in my office for about 5 years now. Downstairs in the living room we’ve had Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, some NetTop PC’s, a Macbook, an iPad or two floating around, and a dual boot laptop. For some reason, we always seen to have problems with our wireless adapters for wifi in the house – we that is, we seem to go through a lot of them. Probably because they’re usually USB and often go between PC’s.

So I put together a new PC today with Ubuntu – and having gone through the whole drawer of wifi adapters, I found a broken Wireless G and 2 broken Wireless N, and one broken laptop wifi card. If I want to get this box online without an ethernet cable I have to use an adapter. Most of the bookmarks I had on file for supported Ubuntu hardware were outdated. One thing I should say is that if you use Ubuntu Linux – always make the official Ubuntu Forums your first stop for tech support. One trip there, and in about 30 seconds I found that there’s an Official Supported Wireless Network section of Ubuntu Help.

There’s a complete list of supported wireless cards for Ubuntu there (both new and old). I’m not a networking expert by any means, but I do know that for best use you don’t want to get a wifi adapter that uses ndiswrapper if you can help it (because it actually uses a Windows wrapper). What you want is a wireless adapter that has native support IN UBUNTU for the wireless chipset.

So, having perused the list myself, here is my recommendation. You’d be surprised how cheap you can get some of this stuff on eBay used, secondhand, and refurb.

My #1 choice for best wireless N adapter for Ubuntu Linux is the D-Link DWA-160 Dual Band “extreme N” wifi adapter. It’s USB, with native chipset support, and should work out of the box! Guess what – if you search hard enough you should be able to get one for around $30 used!

Dlink DWA-160 Xtreme N Dual Band USB Adapter - Brand New
	USD 33.00 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-05 01:26:39
D-LINK XTREME DUO 802.11N DWA-160 (Lot of 10)
	USD 100.00 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-07 00:58:24
D-Link Xtreme N DUO Dualband Draft 802.11n USB Adapter DWA160
	USD 25.85 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-11 00:47:35
DWA-160 Xtreme N Dual Band USB Adapter
	USD 29.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-05 06:15:23
DLink DWA-160 Xtreme N Duo USB Adapter
	USD 78.31 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-06 03:13:53
D-LINK XTREME N DUAL BAND ADAPTER (MODEL #DWA 160)
	USD 14.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-05 05:24:13
D-LINK DWA-160, RangeBooster N DualBand USB 2.0/1.1 adapter is 802.11n
	USD 45.66 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 21:08:52
NEW D-LINK DWA-160 XTREME N DUO USB ADAPTER XP/VISTA
	USD / 55.26 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 15:08:47
DLINK DWA-160 XTREME N USB CONVERTER OMNIDIRECTIONAL
	USD / 56.26 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 05:58:06
D-LINK DWA-160 XTREME N DUAL BAND USB ADAPTER WIFI 11N
	USD 53.81 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-11 13:48:27

The new price for the DWA-160 used is about $47:

Are there other supported cards? Yes, plenty – but I wanted one that had been listed as working in 2011 with native chipset support (for a reasonable price), and this was the best one. Also, for my needs on this project I wanted a wifi N USB adapter for Linux because if I dump this box I don’t want to open it to get the PCI card out, and I want an adapter that will work on a desktop, laptop, whatever we have. I’m glad we found this – it works well for us on this system.

Have you had problems playing .wmv Windows Media video files, or AVI’s after upgrading to Ubunty 9.04 Jaunty? I sure did, and you know I never had these problems before the upgrade at all. Totem would crash immediately on opening a video file, it would just close down unexpectedly. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t play mp3 audio either (but would stay open). I had the same problem playing Windows video and AVI files in VLC and mplayer as well – all video players on my system. Reintstalling the restricted repository W32 Windows Media codecs did absolutely nothing. My problem was with my Toshiba Satellite P105-S6167 laptop.

The good news is – I found a fix! Turns out the problem is with the Intel video driver that got updated in the Jaunty update. All you have to do is follow the instructions in the Reverting the Jaunty Intel Xorg video driver instructions (like I did) and everything will work again – NP at all! Thanks Ubuntu Wiki!

I got the Ubuntu error in update manager “Error failed to fork pty” when I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.04 yesterday.  That was quite annoying for 2 reasons, first because the bug, whatever it is, doesn’t allow you to open a terminal window either.  You get an additional error “cannot launch a child process”.  So I did a quick search of the Interwebs, and low and behold – the fix is pretty easy if you know what to do.  You have to edit the fstab (filesystem tab file) as root, and guess what – because of the bug, you can’t use terminal!

So here is your fix, this is all you have to do.  You can run a command in Ubuntu by hitting the keys “Alt+F2″ at the same time.

Once the window comes up – enter this command and click ok:

devpts /dev/pts devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)


This hit “Alt+F2″ one last time and run this command:

sudo mount -a


Then you should be good, no reboot required!

I’ve had a Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista Home on it for the last two years. It’s my main work machine, the one I do all my blogging and web site work on. In that time I’ve had to reformat it back to it’s original “storebought” state twice (the last time about 10 days ago). That’s always a pain because first you have to backup all of your photos, music, and files to an external drive. Then, once you format and reinstall you have to spend a few hours removing all the crap installed from the factory, and installing all the software you need to work.

It’s a dual-core machine with 2GB of RAM, and sometimes it just gets too damn slow for the resources it should have available. I had a virus once, and it was a PITA to remove. A few weeks back the computer got some kind of a glitch, where it would keep trying to load DLL’s that didn’t exist. This was hanging the machine, and it would literally take 5-8 minutes just to open a file folder. I knew the machine HAD to be reformatted and wiped again, because the restore disk only has the option to install from scratch – there is no “repair over the top of existing Windows” like there is from a real original Windows (non-OEM) disk.

I’ve used Ubuntu on my 1.2Ghz 512MB of RAM 7 year old Gateway machine in the basement for the last 5+ years. It stays on 24/7, it has 3 100GB hard drives in it, and I reboot it maybe 5 times a year. I use it almost every night when I play guitar to listen to mp3′s and play along, and I also do web work on it, lookup lyrics, and write content from time to time. It does have WINE of it for Windows emulation, and I did install (and use) TaxCut on it once a few years back with no problems.

I thought about installing Ubuntu on the laptop when I first got it, but didn’t because I have to have a Windows box to login to work remotely using VPN. It requires Internet Explorer, ActiveX, and all that jazz. Since I knew that the laptop had to be reformatted anyway – I decided to try Ubuntu on it and see how it would work before reinstalling Windows. If I had problems, then in with the Vista restore disk and back to MS-land again. I sent to the Ubuntu Web Site and downloaded the 32-bit ISO to burn and install.

If you haven’t used Ubuntu Linux before – you should try it. The install is painless and as easy as Windows, and to most people that don’t know any different – it’s just a “PC”, and they have no problems using it at all. Case and point, we have relatives that were calling me every 3 months because their computer kept locking up and getting viruses. I was sick of it, so I formatted the disk and installed Ubuntu. I installed Java, Flash, Firefox Windows Media plugin and never looked back. I never told them it wasn’t Windows (they aren’t computer people or techie at all) – and they don’t know any different. They think it’s actually some new version of Windows other people don’t have. They’ve had it one year now, and have never called me to ask “how do I do…” anything, and they have not accidentally screwed it up or gotten a virus at all. In fact, both adults in the house were taking online courses at the college using that PC (and printing out papers) with no problems – AND they never called me to setup the printer! I think that’s really saying something about how far Linux has come the last few years.

When you boot from the Ubuntu CD the first option you have is to “boot live and try”, so I decided to try that first and make sure all the hardware worked. Once the desktop came up, I tried a web browser, and everything (including sound) worked great! All drives and hardware components showed up, even my card reader. I plugged in an external drive, no problems there, and the wireless was fine. There was an icon on the desktop “install” – so I took the plunge. In less than 15 minutes I had wiped the disk, installed Ubuntu 8.10 and was on my new desktop.

I set about installing the things I would need to work, Firefox and my required addons, windows and other (quicktime) media codecs, the latest version of Flash, an Acrobat reader, FTP, telnet, some graphics and movie editors, etc. Then I remembered that there were two things I STILL needed Windows for. The first was to login to work via VPN, and the second was to install and edit my Line 6 PodXT tones for my guitar rig. These were both two very specific things I wouldn’t be able to do in Linux at all.

I remembered at work that they were starting to convert the data center over to “virtual machines”. Instead of buying hundreds of rack mounted servers, they were starting to install virtual machines on the mainframe and really big super-computer servers. This had become really big in the IT business world, but had it translated over to mainstream linux yet?

It turns out it has, and Sun is leading the way (or so it appears). Sun has software called Virtual Box, and the personal license is FREE! I was skeptical at first, but downloaded and installed it on my now Ubuntu laptop. I installed the downloaded .deb package, but you can do it from the command line or with Synaptic no problem. USB support is disabled by default, but that’s easily fixed with a tutorial like “how to enable USB in Virtualbox.

Once I installed the software I created a new “Virtual Machine” and called it “WindowsXP”. I gave it 10GB of disk space and 256MB of Ram, 8MB shared video. It said to put in a CD to install, so I popped in an old WindowsXP disk and let it rip! I took about 10 minutes to install and reboot, and about 20 more minutes on Windows famous “first time configuration” runs, and then the “virtual” PC rebooted and presented me with a login screen. I promptly changed the settings to 1024×768 display (my laptop is widescreen 1680px). When I logged in everything was perfect! I fired up an IE browser and downloaded Firefox. I installed quicktime, flash, and acrobat reader. I logged into my desktop PC remotely – no problem! All from within “virtual Windows XP” window on my Ubuntu Linux desktop. When I went to close the Window I was prompted, do you want to “save the state of the virtual machine”, “power off”, or “reboot”.

Wow, I had to think about the power of what all this meant. Let’s say you had an ubuntu box with a 500GB hard drive. You could install Virtual box with WindowsXP, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or even other versions of Linux if you wanted. Personally I would stick with Windows XP, but you could install all your software on it you normally use (like Office), and then “save the state” of the machine. Let’s say you have 3 kids in the house that are notorious for screwing up your PC (or relatives or friends). Give ‘em each their own virtual machine. If they screw it up – make another!

Kids like to play Windows based games, need a Windows PC for work – all “virtual machine”. Guess what? VirtualBox has versions you can download and install for both Windows AND Mac (free!) too! So, you can download on Windows and install Linux virtual machines, or even other Windows virtual machines. Install on a Mac to install Windows or Linux virtual machines! The possibilities are endless, and it’s all FREE!!

I’m glad I downgraded my Windows Vista laptop to Ubuntu and Windows XP – it’s the best thing I ever did!

I created this tutorial how to page because I had trouble accessing my Ubuntu PC from my Windows based Network (Windows Vista, Windows XP) in my home. I have 4 PC’s (wired and wireless) connected to a router – which is the how they get out the Internet. All the PC’s (including the Ubuntu one) have the same network “workgroup” name. In addition this tutorial assumes you alread have “Samba” installed, and if you don’t run this first in terminal:

sudo apt-get install samba

Next, stop samba while you make the required changes by running this in terminal:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop

Now you need to edit the samba config file, which is located here:

/etc/samba/smb.conf

You can open it in a text editor to make changes by running this in terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

Copy and poast the following into smb.conf:

[global]
    ; General server settings
    netbios name = YOUR_HOSTNAME
    server string =
    workgroup = YOUR_WORKGROUP
    announce version = 5.0
    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

    passdb backend = tdbsam
    security = user
    null passwords = true
    username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
    name resolve order = hosts wins bcast

    wins support = yes

    printing = CUPS
    printcap name = CUPS

    syslog = 1
    syslog only = yes

; NOTE: If you need access to the user home directories uncomment the
; lines below and adjust the settings to your hearts content.
;[homes]
    ;valid users = %S
    ;create mode = 0600
    ;directory mode = 0755
    ;browseable = no
    ;read only = no
    ;veto files = /*.{*}/.*/mail/bin/

; NOTE: Only needed if you run samba as a primary domain controller.
; Not needed as this config doesn't cover that matter.
;[netlogon]
    ;path = /var/lib/samba/netlogon
    ;admin users = Administrator
    ;valid users = %U
    ;read only = no

; NOTE: Again - only needed if you're running a primary domain controller.
;[Profiles]
    ;path = /var/lib/samba/profiles
    ;valid users = %U
    ;create mode = 0600
    ;directory mode = 0700
    ;writeable = yes
    ;browseable = no

; NOTE: Inside this place you may build a printer driver repository for
; Windows - I'll cover this topic in another HOWTO.
[print$]
    path = /var/lib/samba/printers
    browseable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    read only = yes
    write list = root
    create mask = 0664
    directory mask = 0775

[printers]
    path = /tmp
    printable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    browseable = no

; Uncomment if you need to share your CD-/DVD-ROM Drive
;[DVD-ROM Drive]
    ;path = /media/cdrom
    ;browseable = yes
    ;read only = yes
    ;guest ok = yes

[MyFiles]
    path = /media/samba/
    browseable = yes
    read only = no
    guest ok = no
    create mask = 0644
    directory mask = 0755
    force user = YOUR_USERNAME
    force group = YOUR_USERGROUP

Next, you're going to want to edit the appropriate values:

netbios name = name_of_your_computer_will_be_on_the_network
workgroup = same_name_all_computers_in_house_use_as_workgroup
wins suypport = yes
force user = YOUR_USERNAME
force group = YOUR_USERGROUP

you can edit anything else you want, but in most cases at least those 5 things are required. Now, start samba back up:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba start

Next, you need to actually ADD THE USERS MANUALLY INTO SAMBA (this is why mine was failing - I never did this part). Run these commands in terminal:

sudo smbpasswd -L -a your_username
sudo smbpasswd -L -e your_username

You will be asked for a password after running the first one, BE SURE to use your LOGIN password and username for Ubuntu! That's it! You should now be able to see and access the Ubuntu box on the Windows based network, and login from another PC using your main Ubuntu username and password. Any files or folders you right click and "share" on the Ubuntu box will appear on the PC's now when you go to "Network" and the name of your Ubuntu box.

If you get stuck or need more info, view this page for reference.

Here’s a list of top 25 Ubuntu Blogs that just came out the other day. A lot of times you get a “top list”, and it’s just somebody’s favorites. This list is hundreds of thousands of people’s favorites because the criteria to get on the list were to be in the google top 200 for the terms “ubuntu blog”, and then they were scored by google pagerank, alexa ranking, technorati score, and number of bloglines subscribers. All in all what you get a REALLY GOOD quality list of blogs about Ubuntu Linux. If you use Ubuntu you’ll want to bookmark that page and visit it again and again.

So you’ve been using linux for awhile now, and it’s time to install another hard drive for some more storage? Maybe it’s finally time to wipe out a Window’s or NTFS partition.

In any event, I wrote this post so you would have a little help through this step. I’m going to assume that you already know how to install a hard drive. I’m also going to assume that you knew how to make it a master or slave, you’ve checked to make sure that it shows up in bios, and that it was intalled properly. It also assumes you’ve already formatted your drive in linux ext3 format, using a tool like gParted, or something similar.

If you’ve done all of these things, then boot up your system – and let’s get going. I’m using Ubuntu linux – formerly Breezy 5.10, but I’ve recently upgraded to Dapper 6.06.

Open up a terminal window and run the following command:
$ sudo fdisk -l

You should get a listing of the hard drives installed on your computer. There will be a little paragraph for each one that will look like this:


Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4678 37576003+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 4679 4865 1502077+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 4679 4865 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris


In windows disk drives are assigned an alphabet letter, and traditionally – floppy disk drives were a: and / or b:, and the main hard drive was c:/. Then the first cdrom or dvdrom was d:/, and any additional drives would be e:, f:, and so on. In linux it’s kind of the same, but in a different format. All hard drives installed are listed in the ‘device’ or /dev directory. All drives start with the appendage “hd” (I think for ‘hard drive’).

So, if you have 2 hard drives and one cdrom – then you have 3 devices. You have a hda, hdb, and hdc. The number of partitions comes next. If your main hard drive is linux – and you have 3 partitions, then you’ll have a hda1, hda2, and hda5. The partition numbers aren’t in a logical order – hda5 is always the swap partition.

So know, if you see your hard drive listed in the sudo fdisk -l, then you know you can mount it. Your computer has a startup file that tells it what to mount when it boots. We need to edit this file and add the new drive.

But first we have to create a directory. We have to create what’s called a “mount point”. A mount point is a virtual directory. It’s like saying – mount that hard drive from this directory.

The most logical place to create the mount point for the new hard drive is either the /mnt or /media folder. Many would say that /mnt is the only place it should be – the mount folder. However, Ubuntu always mounts all dvd, cd, and removable media in /media. I chose to make my mount point here for just that very reason.

Think of what you want to call the new mount point name. Just make sure you don’t use any special characters or spaces in the name. I called mine linuxstore. Now, in terminal run the following command substituting my mount point name for yours:
$ sudo mkdir /media/linuxstore

Next, here’s one of the most important things….and somethng that I didn’t find in any of the articles on the web when I was trying to figure out how to do this. You have to make the mount point directory ‘writable’. In other words, you have to give it writable permissions. They have to be world-writable permissions since you aren’t a member of the ‘root’ group in which all mount points are owned.

So, now you want to run the following command (again substituting my mount point name for yours):
$ chmod 777 /media/linuxstore

If you want to mount your drive right away, and you don’t care if it’s mounted automatically every time you boot – then in terminal run the following command:
$ mount /dev/hdd1 /media/linuxstore

There! Now you are temporarily mounted. But…if you want it to be permanent, you need to edit your filesystem tab file. Run the following command in terminal:
$ gedit /etc/fstab

The text editor window will appear with the fstab file loaded up. You will see something that looks kind of like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /media/hdb1 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0


All you have to do is add a new line for the new drive…
I will add the following line to my fstab for my new drive:

/dev/hdd1 /media/linuxstore ext3 defaults 0 0


Just be sure to substitute both the name of my hard drive for yours (mine is hdd1, is yours hdc1 or another name?), and my mount point hame for yours. Then save the file.

Now you will have the new hard drive mounted and writable both every time you boot. In Ubuntu, you should find your new drive listed under your ‘Places’ menu. To make the hard drive show up right now, without rebooting – just reload your fstab file with the following command:
$ sudo mount -a

Now you’re done! Enjoy your new storage drive in Linux!

originally published: 2006-06-04 13:28:53 -0400