I’m using Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit, Intrepid Ibex, but these instructions should work for users of other distros (such as Linux Mint, Fedora, Sabayon, etc) as well.

This morning I needed to pull some images off of my camera’s SD card using my Dell Studio 17′s built-in card reader. I plugged the card in, got sidetracked for a few minutes, and then realized that I couldn’t find a mount point for my card.

Usually when I plug in the card, it is automatically identified and mounted. Then Nautilus would show a listing in the left-hand pane for the card allowing me easy access to the contents. However, that didn’t happen today.

I thought about rebooting in order to see if it was just a fluke, but I didn’t want to save all my projects, close out all my applications, reboot, and load everything back up. So, I thought I’d see about mounting the device manually. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult at all.

Hardware Compatibility

I’m running a Dell Studio 1735 laptop. The exact card adapter that I’m using is a Ricoh R5C822. If you are not using the same adapter on the same computer, the instructions could vary greatly since the hardware configuration will be different.

To verify that you are using the same adapter, run the following command in Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal):

lspci|grep R5C822

You should get output similar to the following if you have the same adapter:

03:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)

Of course, trying the following instructions even if your system varies is still worth a try. If you successfully use the instructions on a different system/adapter, please leave a comment about your results.

Mounting the Device

Simply run the following two commands in Terminal to mount the card to a new mount point called /media/cardreader:

sudo mkdir /media/cardreader
sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/cardreader

This should result in /media/cardreader being filled with the contents of the inserted card and by a new mounted device called cardreader poping up on Nautilus.

When you are done with the card, close out all the applications that are referring to files or folders on the card. You can then unmount it and remove the unneeded mount point by running the following:

sudo umount /media/cardreader
sudo rmdir /media/cardreader

If you need, you could create a couple of shell scripts to run these commands quickly when you need access to the card reader.

Conclusion

I still have no idea why my card reader did not automatically mount when I plugged in the card. My hope is that this is a temporary problem and not a persistent issue. I’ll test more later on. If this is more than a temporary issue, I’ll find a solution and post it here.

For right now, the card reader worked as expected after a reboot. I popped the card into the reader, and the pop-up asked me what I’d like to do with the files.

A visitor to the site mentioned that he has the same laptop as I have yet is running Linux Mint rather than Ubuntu. He said that all the help that I was offering for getting Ubuntu to run well on the Studio 17 worked for him in Linux Mint except the headphone fix didn’t work. So, I dug in to see if I could find a solution.

I installed Linux Mint on my Dell Studio 1735 two nights ago and got the headphone jacks working successfully. Here’s step-by-step what I did:

1. Installed the latest Linux Mint. As of this writing, the latest version is Linux Mint 6 Felicia.
2. Booted and logged into the Linux Mint desktop.
3. Ran mintUpdate by double-clicking the open padlock in the tray and clicked “Install Updates”.
4. I then ran Synaptic (Menu > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager), clicked “Mark All Upgrades”, and clicked “Apply”.
5. To make sure that any possible changes that could have fixed the headphone jacks had a chance to work, I rebooted. Amazingly, they already worked.

So, to make sure that you get the needed updates, run mintUpdate (Menu > Administration > mintUpdate) and install all the updates followed by running Synaptic (Menu > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager) and install all upgrades. This update process should install the 2.6.27-11-generic kernel. At this point, you should reboot your system so that you can load this new kernel. When the boot option screen (Grub loader) is brought up, make sure that you select the new 2.6.27-11-generic boot option (it should be default).

In step five, I say “amazingly” because when I first started to write this post, I had to do a lot of workaround to make the headphones work. However, I started again from a fresh install to verify the exact sequence of steps and found that things just worked this time. So, it may be that an update came out between my first try and second try that fixed this issue. If so, go Linux Mint team.

Please report your results with Linx Mint on your Dell Studio laptop.

As always, if you have a problem that you can’t find a solution to, ask in a comment or contact me.

A number of updates were installed on my machine yesterday. Ubuntu asked me to reboot, but I was busy, so I never ended up doing that yesterday. This morning, I booted my machine and was very surprised to find out that my headphone jacks no longer worked. Needless to say, I was upset.

As I discussed in a previous post, I’m running Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on a Dell Studio 17 laptop and getting the headphones to work required some workarounds. Basically, you had to set up the headphones to be line outs which caused one of the jacks to function but failed to mute the speakers when headphones were plugged in. This resulted in needing to manually mute and unmute the Front audio channel when you used or removed headphones. It’s because of this workaround that I thought the jack no longer worked.

In fact, it wasn’t that the jack had failed, it’s that I had the Front channel muted. I figured that I’d just unmute the speakers to ensure that the speakers still worked, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear sound blaring out of my headphones. Not only do the headphones now work while the Front channel is unmuted, they properly disable the speakers when headphones or speakers are plugged into the jack. Needless to say, this is a very nice improvement as compared to before.

At this point I realized that the other jack might function as well. In order to test this, I left my headphones plugged in and plugged in a set of speakers to the other jack (no, I don’t commonly do this, it’s just for testing purposes). I turned the speakers on, and they too had sound, glorious sound! I put the headphones in my ears, and they too were going. I played around with plugging and unplugging cables, and everything worked exactly as you’d expect. If anything is plugged into either headphone jack, the speakers turn off and sound comes through the jack(s). Unplug all devices from the jacks, and the speakers turn on.

This seems like a simple thing, and in reality it is. However, having something work the way it should is a thousand times better than having it not work properly. This means that any Dell Studio laptop users (and most likely users of other systems with similar hardware) won’t have to mess around with their settings until the headphone jacks operate properly.

Looking at my Synaptic Package Manager history, I see that new versions of libpulse and pulseaudio files were installed. In addition to these files, an updated kernel from January 14th (2.6.27.11) was installed. I’m still new to how all this stuff works, so I’m not sure if the new kernel or the new Pulse Audio files are to be credited with the fix. That being the case, I’ll thank both the kernel dev team and the Pulse Audio dev team for your hard work. Even if one of those teams isn’t to credit for this, I can only run Ubuntu on my laptop well because of their (and thousands of others) efforts.

Thank you to the dev teams that contribute countless hours of labor so that I can keep busy on my work and my projects rather than messing around on my system all day. This next song is for you.

I received a comment from John asking about using a mic with Ubuntu on a Dell Studio. I hadn’t tried to use my mic before, so I thought that it was time to try it out. After playing around a bit, I figured it out.

The first thing I did was load up the Sound Recorder (Applications > Sound and Video > Sound Recorder). I did this so that I could gauge whether or not sound is coming through while I make changes. I hit the record button and noticed that the Level indicator at the bottom of the Sound Recorder was empty, so it was clear that the mic was muted somewhere.

I then loaded up the Volume Control (System > Preferences > Volume Control). I selected the Recording tab in Volume Control and clicked Preferences. I put a check next to the Capture track, ensured that Front Mic Mixer was checked, and clicked Close. This added a new Capture section to the Recording tab that was both muted and set to 0 volume. I unmuted Capture and put both the Front Mic Mixer and the Capture volume levels to max.

I then went back to the Sound Record, selected Capture from the “Record from input” drop-down, and clicked Record. Now the Level indicator showed sound getting through to the program. I said a few things, clicked Stop, and pressed Play to hear the result.

I played around with the volume a little bit to get the recording volume to match what I wanted and was quite pleased.

To summarize how to fix the problem, add both the Front Mic Mixer and Capture tracks to the Volume Control application. Make sure that both of these tracks are unmuted and have their volume all the way up on the Recording tab. Test out the volume level using the Sound Recorder and make adjustments as necessary.

Thanks for the great question John.

If you have any questions about getting something to work with your Ubuntu system, I’d be glad to take on the challenge. You can leave a comment or send me a message.

As of today, it has been exactly two weeks since I started using Ubuntu as my OS at the office. Not only that, it’s been two weeks since my office computer (Dell Studio 17) has booted into Windows.

I left Windows on the system “just in case,” but much to my surprise, I haven’t needed it once. Running Ubuntu is different than running Windows, but it’s not any more difficult. In fact, Ubuntu is much more powerful and forgiving than Windows has been. I can work so much faster now that I’m running Ubuntu than I ever have been able to with Windows, and that’s without being able to use my favorite editor, Crimson Editor.

Problems/Dislikes

Running Ubuntu hasn’t been without any issues. Frankly, every OS has its own little quirks that we just get used to. For example, I had to get used to how browsing network shares on Windows is absurdly slow or how Explorer has a tendency to freeze for no good reason in Windows Vista.

With that said, here are the things that I don’t like about my experience with Ubuntu so far.

• The mouse acceleration is still a bit odd. I’ve gotten used to it, but I still don’t like it. Whenever I think about how the mouse responds, I realize that it just feels sluggish by comparison to how the mouse responded in Windows. I’m not really sure if there is any way to address this rather than just adapting to it.
• I got dual screens to work, but I still have to manually change how this is set up each time I boot. For example, every time I log in, I have to tell the ATI Catalyst Control Center that I want my laptop screen to be to the right of the other monitor. It only takes a minute to do this, but it is annoying.The funny thing is that when I change the setting and accept it, the control panel tells me to reboot for the change to take effect. If I reboot, the screen go back to clone. If I don’t reboot, it works just fine.I’m sure that this is more to do with ATI’s driver and not so much with Ubuntu, but I’d like to find out 1) what software is to blame and 2) how to fix it so it automatically sets my screens like this when I have the monitor plugged in.
• Very poor video performance. Once again, this is dealing with the ATI driver. I know that there are ways to squeeze more performance out of the video chipset, but it requires me to sacrifice a number of other options that I want to run (such as Compiz). I can’t wait until hardware vendors start paying more attention to Linux and provide proper drivers.In my opinion, having fully-functional graphics drivers is the biggest hurdle for most people to switch over to Linux. My buddy Dan told me yesterday that he’d switch over to Ubuntu in a heartbeat if he could quickly and easily get WoW working with good performance on his system with Ubuntu.I’m not even a gamer, and I still had this hesitation when it came to switching over. We really need to find a way to address this.
• Odd sound issues.
  • As I posted about earlier, the sound jacks on my laptop don’t exactly work the way that they should. I’ve found ways to work around the issues, but it still is a cumbersome and inconvinient solution.
  • With some of the music apps (Rhythmbox in particular), the audio can get very choppy while my CPU is at around 10-20% utilization. I have yet to find a reason for this or a solution. For now, I’m only using Totem or Banshee as they do not have this music studdering issue.
  • The volume has an extremely sharp drop off. When I go down one notch from 100% (which is 93%), the volume I hear seems to decrease to 40%. When I go down another notch (88%), the volumes sounds to be at 20%. At 70% volume, only the loudest sounds can be heard, and those sounds are nearly impossible to hear without headphones. At 63% volume, there is no sound at all. I have yet to find any reason for this and would really like to find a solution as it is difficult to chose between “too loud” and “too quite” when going between 100% and 93% volume when a song changes.
• Lack of right-click drag for file operations in GNOME. Whenever I did any type of file operations where I would copy or move files from one location to another in Windows, I would always right-click and drag as it provided me a variety of options when I dropped the files into their destination location. I could easily select whether I wanted to copy, move, create shortcuts, etc. This really should be added.Solution: I just found out that GNOME does support this, but it isn’t very intuitive. Rather than right-click and drag, middle-click and drag files. When you drop the files, it provides you with the options of Copy, Move, Link, Cancel, and oddly “Set as Background”. So, this is no longer a problem. It seems that the idea for changing this behavior is so that the context menus that appear when you right click can be navigated without releasing the mouse button and an option can be selected by releasing.
• Flash doesn’t work quite right. Every so often, Flash just refuses to work correctly. I’m not exactly a fan of Flash itself and would rather see most sites devoid of all Flash content. However, many sites these days do have Flash all over them and using the site requires using the Flash elements. When Flash fails, these sites fail too. Often times refreshing the page works but sometimes I have to restart the browser.
• I still have yet to find a programming editor that I like. I’ll go into more detail on this issue in a future post, but here is the gist.
  • Crimson Editor technically runs in Ubuntu through Wine, but it by no means “works”.
  • Gedit is what I currently use, but it is lacking in many areas.
  • I’ve tried many, many editors so far, but none of them can match Crimson Editor.

Likes

I’m sure that I just made my experience with Ubuntu sound horrible. I could easily make a list that long or longer with every OS I’ve ever used, all the way back to DOS 4.0.

I don’t think I could list everything I like about Ubuntu, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to read all that list. So, I will focus on the highlights.

• Command shell worth using. The Terminal in Linux is an amazing thing. I was a huge fan of the DOS command line when I was young. I became extremely disappointed when Windows started taking off and Microsoft more or less completely stopped development of the command shell.By the end of an average work day, I typically have between three to six terminal session open. Some of those sessions have more than one tab going. So, the value of using the terminal is extremely high. For those of you that regularly use Linux and have yet to start using the Terminal, you are missing out.
• Proper software updates. I was going to go in depth about this, but I think this deserves its own post since it’s a big topic and deserves plenty of time to explore what is so good about it.
• True flexibility. If I don’t like something in Ubuntu, I really can remove or change it. I can use a desktop environment other than GNOME. I can use a window manager other than Metacity. I can use a command shell other than Bash. I can have one workspace or dozens. I can have the default panels in their default positions, move them around, remove them, add new ones, rearrange the items in the panels, or add new items to the panels. I can also customize the hotkeys and add new ones. The list goes on.
• In case I need to reboot, I can simply hit Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and my session will be terminated and I’m greeted with the login screen a few seconds later. Another nice thing is that I rarely have to do this.
• The ability to drag windows around by holding down the alt key. This seemed like a minor thing at first, but it really is so much quicker to just throw the cursor at a window, hold down alt, and drag it around than it is to move the cursor to the title bar and drag it around.
• Since this is Linux, SSH is built in tightly. This allows me to connect and use remote machines extremely easily. Such as being able to connect by simply typing “ssh hostname” on the command line and automatically connecting with my private key while having my username and settings automatically supplied via my ~/.ssh/config file. I also can mount these remote filesystems as accessible partitions on my system.
• Improved stability. I have to say that there are times where my Ubuntu session has frozen up or I’ve had to reboot, but those times are typically after I’ve been messing around with my configuration. Overall, the stability has been very impressive.
• Simple owner/group/world permissions and ownership. With a quick “ls -l” on the command line, I can immediately see what the permissions are for a file.
• File sharing that works. I will say that I did not have an easy time with setting up file sharing in Samba. I think that this can definitely be improved. However, once I read through the documentation and set everything up, it just worked and has ever since. By comparison, it is “easier” to set up a file sharing configuration on Windows, but it almost never works without hours of trial and error and rarely works the same way twice.
• Easy switching of active network connection. I love how if you have the option of many different network connections that simply clicking the NetworkManager Applet icon allows for rapid switching between wired and wireless options as well as which wireless access point you wish to connect to. This makes switching connections for whatever reason extremely fast and easy.
• Symbolic link files. Being able to create a reference to another file, folder, partition anywhere you want is a great feature. I know that the NTFS file system now can support similar features, but since the command line is such a pain, and that’s the only way it can be used, I never used it.
• Ubuntu has a truly amazing installer which I have yet to see matched by any other OS other than certain similar Linux distros, such as Linux Mint.
• Hotkeys… Beautiful hotkeys. Gnome has a built in hotkey editor to modify all of its hotkeys. Compiz has hotkey settings for just about everything in it.

These things just touch the tip of the iceberg and are features that come to mind right now. If I were to pick one thing that I like the most about Linux, it’s that fact that I truly do have choice. Rather than being limited to what is offered to me, I can customize a distro as much as I want by adding or completely removing certain parts of it.

Conclusion

My life with desktop Linux is just beginning. I’m sure that there are many more frustrations down the road, but I have no doubt that the new opportunities that it will keep offering me will continue to outweigh any detriment that may exist.

Most of the problems that bother me the most are specifically because of poor hardware driver or software build support by the vendor. I fully trust that this problem will be taken care of in time due to the increasing usage of Linux.

I’m now on my fifth day of using Ubuntu on my office machine. Slowly, I’m starting to get accustomed to working with it, but there are still a variety of things that I still need to do from time to time.

For those that haven’t read my previous posts on this topic, I’ve switched from Windows Vista to Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) on my Dell Studio 17 laptop that I use at the office. Even though Ubuntu has a great ability to “just work,” often times it is difficult and unintuitive to get certain things to work. So, I decided to blog about all those difficulties so that I can have this information to rely on later and so others can benefit from my experience.

I couldn’t get Java to function with Firefox. The main problem here is that Sun hasn’t released an official plugin with support for the 64-bit platform. I found some workarounds that were not tasteful at all, such as: removing my current Firefox and replacing it with a 32-bit version, manually creating a bunch of complex wrappers to interface my 64-bit Firefox with the 32-bit Java plugin, and solutions that get even worse from here. I decided to ditch Java and hope for finding a solution sometime later. Keep reading though, because I did find a solution.

In order for me to play “restricted format” multimedia content, I had to enable new repositories and install additional software. Fortunately, there is a very handy guide to adding support for restricted formats for Ubuntu.

Must to my surprise, installing the “ubuntu-restricted-extras” package as recommended in the guide, automatically added Java support for me. I wish that they made this more clear, since I could have ended my search for Java support much earlier. This support is thanks to the IcedTea project which seeks to make a Java interpreter that doesn’t require any non-free code. My thanks go out to the IcedTea team for making adding Java support to my 64-bit Ubuntu system so easy.

Interesting function that I just discovered: Nautilus, the default file browser for Ubuntu, has tabs now. Press Ctrl+T, and a new tab will open. I have yet to find a good use for this as dragging between two seperate windows works well. Even if I don’t find a long-term value in this feature, I do find it very interesting.

I got Ubuntu successfully installed on my office machine (Dell Studio 17) yesterday. Today, I’m going to use it all day at the office while making notes on what still doesn’t work, what I could get to work, how I fixed problems, and I’m sure some random ramblings will enter at some point.

Dual Monitors

The first issue didn’t take long to present itself. I have an external 24″ LCD that I have hook up to at the office. This morning, I did what I normally do, plug in everything, including the monitor, and then start up the machine. When Ubuntu came up, the LCD functioned, but it was a clone of main screen.

I went into System > Preferences > Screen Resolution to see if I could set the monitors to have independent content. Unfortunately only one screen was shown.

I rebooted with the monitor disconnected and then plugged it in when Ubuntu had loaded. This produced something new: The screens were still cloned, but the primary laptop screen always tried to “focus” or center on the mouse cursor causing large portions of the screen to be cropped off if I moved the mouse to any of the edges. This was a new situation. I restarted X (ctrl+alt+backspace), and the problem remained. I decided to ignore this until I found another solution.

I googled around, read at least a dozen forum threads, and still didn’t find anything to address the issue of using dual view rather than clone view. So, I did what any good computer user should (or shouldn’t) do; I started digging around the menus for a possible solution. It only took me a couple of minutes to figure it out.

The Dell Studio 15 and Dell Studio 17 use an AMD video solution (personally, I prefer nVidia, but I digress). If you install the AMD proprietary drivers, you get a program at Applications > Accessories > ATI Catalyst Control Center. From inside this program, I could select a specific screen, click on the Multi-Display tab, and tell it how I wanted that screen to behave. I selected the external monitor from the drop-down, clicked the Multi-Display tab and then selected “Big Desktop left of display 1,” which matched the physical setup of the screens on my desk. The screens reconfigured themselves immediately.

Since I’m using cubes with Compiz, I loaded System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager, clicked on “Desktop Cube”, and changed the “Multi Output Mode” option to “Multiple cubes” to give each screen its own cube.

Headphones

Since I work in a room with other people, I always have headphones in. As soon as I had my dual monitor issue taken care of, I loaded up some music and found out that the sound didn’t work. I unplugged my headphones and heard sound from the system’s speakers. I plugged the headphones back in and didn’t hear sound from the headphones or the speakers.

I think this issue is due to the fancy headphone outputs on the Dell Studio 17. There are dual headphone outputs. In Windows, a software package allows me to select how I’d like to treat the individual jacks. I can use them as headphone outputs or line outs. I think it’s this ability to switch the functionality of the jacks combined with the fact that there is more than one jack that causes Ubuntu to fail.

A bit of playing around later, I found that if I loaded the Volume Control (right-click the speaker on the panel by the clock and select “Open Volume Control”), selected the Switches tab, and checked the “Headphone as Line Out” option, that sound is properly sent to the headphones. However, this has a side effect as having a headphone plugged in no longer disables the speakers. I’m working around this by muting the sound for the Front outputs in the Playback tab while the headphones are in use. Not the best solution, but it works.

Also of note, only the middle headphone jack functions for headphones as the front jack seems to be unaffected by the line out option.

There is an update on the headphone issue: Headphones Jacks Now Fully Work on Dell Studio 17 Running Ubuntu

Accessing the Windows Partition

Since I loaded Ubuntu to dual boot with the existing Vista, I wanted to be able to access the contents of the Windows drive. Here’s how I did it.

First, I had to install a new package. I loaded up terminal and executed:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

I then needed to find out which partition I needed to access. I ran “sudo fdisk -l” and received the following output:

   Device Boot   Start      End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            1       19      152586   de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2           20     1325    10485760    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *     1325    16001   117882777+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4        16002    30401   115668000    5  Extended
/dev/sda5        16002    29810   110920761   83  Linux
/dev/sda6        29811    30401     4747176   82  Linux swap

Notice that /dev/sda3 is a bootable partition, is quite large (number of blocks), and uses the NTFS format. /dev/sda3 is my Windows partition.

I created a location to mount the partition called /mnt/windows  by running “sudo mkdir /mnt/windows“. I then modified the filesystem table (sudo vi /etc/fstab) and added the following line:

/dev/sda3  /mnt/windows  ntfs-3g  quiet,defaults,rw  0  0

The two bolded entries are what you will need to modify to match your own setup. The first option is the partition to mount. The second option is where you wish to mount the partition.

To load my changes immediately, I ran “sudo mount -a” to reload the partition mount instructions.

Now all my Windows files are easily accessible at all times at /mnt/windows.

Accessing Remote File Systems

Since I frequently access remote Linux file systems for my job and my hobbies, I thought that I’d take advantage of SSH Filesystem in order to make these file systems available as if they were local file systems. Thanks to the SSHFS AUTOmount on Feisty guide, I was able to set this up quickly and easily. Not only that, but the scripts provided automatically mount and unmount the filesystems when the internet connection goes up or down, which is really, really cool to play around with and watch.

I did make a modification to the /etc/network/if-down.d/umountsshfs script provided in the previously mentioned guide. This change may or may not be needed depending on your setup. I changed the last line to the following, note the bolded portion:

In case anyone is interested in my final /etc/fstab entry format, here’s one as a sample:

sshfs#servername:  /mnt/servername  fuse  comment=sshfs,
uid=1000,gid=1000,users,noauto,exec,allow_other,reconnect,
transform_symlinks,BatchMode=yes,ConnectTimeout=10  0  0

Note: I changed the actual server name to protect the innocent. Also, the uid and gid are specific to my setup. You can find your’s by running “id” on the command line.

You may notice the lack of username and other relevant parameters. I put those in my ~/.ssh/config file to make connections to the servers more easy. For example, here’s a sample entry from my ~/.ssh/config:

Host hostname
     User username
     ServerAliveInterval 15
     Port 23

An entry can be created for each server with specific SSH directives which allow you to keep connection information for often-used servers short and simple. Setting the ServerAliveInterval helps keep inactive connections alive (this may not be needed or recommenI have to ded in your setup). You can find a full listing of available options and their descriptions at the ssh_config NetBSD Manual Page. You might also find the SshfsFaq helpful if you try to set this up.

Misc Other Setup

I installed Crimson Editor to be my programming editor until I find one I like that is Linux based. I really like Crimson Editor, so it’s going to be hard for me to find a replacement. Running CE in Wine isn’t without its problems though. It seems that CE only remembers changes to settings if I exit by doing File > Exit. If I simply close the window, the settings are not saved.

I tried gedit earlier, and it is extremely close to what I want but is just enough off to make me not want to keep trying with it. It sounds silly, but if gedit just added the ability to make the tabs visible, I would probably use it as my main editor.

I installed jEdit, but it failed to load. I reasoned that since jEdit was built on Java that the JRE was missing, so I installed it. I find it odd that the JRE wasn’t installed by default when I installed jEdit. I’ll try it out later and see what I think.

I can’t use my favorite coding font, Dina, so I’m hunting for a replacement there as well. So far, I’ve tried Bitstream Vera Sans Mono and Monaco. They are both nice, but they just aren’t what I’m looking for. Oh well… Time to keep looking. Why or why can’t I just have my lovely Dina?

Remaining Issues

I still have massive problems with video. I’m starting think that AMD video hardware just doesn’t perform well in Ubuntu, even with the proprietary driver. Flash video is fine, but all other video is choppy or has a frame rate around 1fps. The performance is so poor, it seems like all video decoding and rendering is handled in software rather than hardware. I have yet to confirm this though.

I can increase or decrease the brightness using the Fn+Up/Down keys, but there are problems. The brightness indicator doesn’t go away, the keyboard stops functioning, and the panels no longer function. Every time I accidentally adjust the brightness manually, I have to restart X (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace).

There are odd times when X just seems to fail. It always happens in different ways, but every time it happens, the windows just stop responding properly or windows get stuck in odd places. As with the brightness adjustment issue, restarting X is a quick fix. I’d really rather not have to do that though as it closes everything I have open. Sure beats a complete reboot however.

The trackpad on the Studio 17 is really wide. I keep accidentally touching it with my palm, causing focus to shift elsewhere while I’m typing. I need to see if I can change a setting somewhere to ignore the touchpad as I type.

The mouse acceleration is much different than I’m used to in Windows, but I’m sure that I will get adjusted to this.

Performance overall seems a bit sluggish. For example, whenever I visit a WordPress site that has the snowfall thing going on (thanks Matt), scrolling is very choppy and closing/switching tabs becomes slow. I’ll have to see if I can find a site that has information about optimizing Ubuntu performance to get the mose out of the machine.

Final Thoughts

I have to admit that I’ve found more issues that I expected, and not all the problems have been readily solvable. Ubuntu has already given me the ability to do things that I just couldn’t do with Windows. Ubuntu has also presented some very core problems which may or may not be fixable, but at least I have the power to make changes and try to fix it while I always felt that Windows told me to “suck it up kid, that’s the way it is.”

I’ll be playing with the system more over the weekend. I hope to have it in fighting shape by Monday so that I can stop messing with my computer and start using it.

I have a Dell Studio 17 for my office computer. It’s a nice machine, but Vista fails horribly on it. The ATI driver for it causes a BSoD on average, once a day. I’ve finally had enough, so I’m switching over to Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex.

I’m writing this post as I install and configure Ubuntu. This will make it easier for me to keep track of what I did in case I need to undo something later or if anybody reading this wants to make the switchover as well.

Installing

Ubuntu truly has an incredible installer. There isn’t much to talk about since it was so easy.

I even installed Ubuntu while keeping Windows intact. This used to be extremely difficult. That is not the case anymore. I simply used the “Guided – resize” option. This option allows you to easily resize the Windows partition to create a new partition from the freed space where Ubuntu will be installed. I easily selected to give Windows and Ubuntu each a 100GB partition. The resizing took about half an hour. My only complaint is that the progress bar went from 0% to done with no intervals indicating how much time remained.

Overall, the installation took about 45 minutes with most of that time spent resizing the partition. Not only did the installer resize the partition and easily install Ubuntu, but it also imported many settings and options from my user on Windows. If the installation is this easy now, I can only imagine how amazing the installer is going to be a few versions from now.

I didn’t test everything, but the machine seemed to be completely functional at this point. All graphics were fluid, I was easily able to connect to my WPA2 access point, and sound worked. Now it’s time get everything set up the way I want.

Configuration

Drivers

Two proprietary drivers were available after the system booted up: “Broadcom STA wireless driver” and “ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver.” I activated the Broadcom proprietary driver which was quickly installed. I then tried to activate the AMD proprietary driver, but it failed without an error or message. I decided that I might need to update the system first.

I ran System > Administration > Update Manager and updated all the installed packages. I then rebooted the system. After this, I was able to activate the AMD proprietary driver without any issues.

Firefox

I use a highly-customized version of Firefox. Unfortunately, these modifications didn’t transfer over so well from Windows to Ubuntu. When I loaded Firefox, I found that I didn’t have half of the menu, the address bar was gone, and the View menu was gone so that I couldn’t fix it. I closed Firefox and decided that I would come back and figure it out later. For some unknown reason, I started Firefox again, and amazingly, it had reset itself back to default. Odd things like this confuse me and I typically don’t like them, but this odd behavior had a really good result in that it gave me a functional browser.

In previous versions of Ubuntu that I’ve played with, adding Flash to Firefox was amazingly easy: visit a site that uses Flash, click to install Flash, and you’re done. For some reason, this is different in Ibex. When I visited Youtube, I got the following message:

Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe’s Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

When I visited the link, all the options offered were for 32-bit systems yet my install was 64-bit. Needless to say, none of the options worked.

I ended up finding the following instructions to install Flash 10 easily on Ubuntu 64-bit.

$ wget http://queleimporta.com/downloads/flash10_en.sh
$ sudo bash ./flash10_en.sh

I then noticed that the backspace key didn’t take me to the previous page. Fortunately I found Fix Firefox Backspace to Take You to the Previous Page, which fixed the problem immediately.

So far, everything else seems to be working as expected, including the forward/back keys on my mouse  going forward/back in pages and middle-clicking opening up links in a new tab.

Packages

I installed the following packages:

audacious, compizconfig-settings-manager, emerald, mplayer, rar, subversion, thunderbird, unrar, vim, vlc, wine

Misc Changes

After getting those packages loaded, I loaded Sessions (System > Preferences > Sessions) and added a new program. I gave it a name of “Emerald” and put in a command of “emerald — replace”. This loads up Emerald each time Ubuntu boots. I then loaded the Royale Vista II Dark by dobee theme. I also configured Compiz using System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager.

I loaded up some videos and audio files and selected to install the required codecs. Due to having Compiz, the video flickered badly in MPlayer, so I switched the video driver to x11. I still have some video issues (such as the video not resizing when I change the window size), but I hope to have those issues taken care of soon.

I wanted to be able to use the Win key for creating hotkeys, and that requires a change in Ubuntu. Load the Keyboard Preferences via System > Preferences > Keyboard. Click the Layouts tabs and the “Other Options…” button. Expand “Alt/Win key behavior” and change it to “Super is mapped to the Win-key”. Now you can use the Win key for creating hotkeys. For example, I bound win+e to open the Home folder, win+c to run calculator, win+r to load the run dialog, etc.

I changed the workspaces from 2 to 4 in order to make it an actual cube. Just right-click the workspace panel in the bottom-right, select Preferences, change the Columns to 4, and click Close.

Conclusion

So far, everything is working very well. I haven’t hit any major problems except for the video codec issue, which isn’t a major issue currently since this is a work machine and not a general use machine. I’ll need to find a solution however.

I’m going to bring my laptop into the office tomorrow and see how well it does in actual use. Stay tuned for the “rest of the story.”