Top Tip: Using Virtual Box Guests with multiple GNOME desktops

Compiz

I’m using a Windows XP desktop running Virtual Box under a Gnome Linux (Ubuntu 8.04). It’s quite handy to dedicate a virtual desktop to the Guest, or each guest if you have enough memory for more than one.

Using my default Compiz keyboard I can jump into the guest using <ctrl><alt><arrow>, if the guest is in full screen mode then I get put straight into Windows and can type away, use a mouse etc.

Going back to Linux is a little more difficult as Windows throws away the Compiz key shortcuts. Howevever if you preface the Compiz shortcuts with <RightCtrl> (assumes you are using the default VirtualBox hot keys) then you can jump backwards (or fowards).

Virtual Box logo

Wake up before Apple just replaces M$?

Apple Climbs Into Third Place In U.S. PC Market

Now that there is an AppStore with applications in iTunes, why wouldn’t Apple move next to distribute all applications through iTunes

A very cogent comment from ionix5891 on /. warning us no to sleep walk into the arms of another monopoly power. As I said before, Steve Jobs can be a very scary guy!

Personally, now that Ubuntu 8.04 (or Spiny Norman as I call it) is so polished I’m not feeling such an urgent need to rush back into the arms of Cupertino. Mr Shuttleworth may have made life a lot less exciting, but now it all ‘just works’. Well, except for some proprietary media formats still.

Having said that, the family is still happy plugging away on the iMac (except when my son wants to run games)

What I will do when my machine gets back from the menders

Currently I am feeling very cut off as the latop is at the menders having it’s drive electronics diagnosed. However as soon as it gets back I shall be off to the land of Git after re-reading Sam’s updated (and excellent) git-svn tutorial. Git is designed for distributed use, is fast and I’m assured very flexible…

Of course I may not wait that long as I’m being tempted to purchase an HP 2133, despite it having a Broadcomm wireless adaptor and all the bloody aggro that entails.

Top Tip: bcm43xx on nx6125

WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty No-Fluff - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Step 2b: sp33008 Driver Download/Extraction

First off I’d like to thank Broadcomm for being such a bunch of peasants as to make life hard for people not running operating systems from the West Coast USA.

Here is my contribution to the many, many, comments on the web on how to get the bmc wireless hardware working. Note that there seems to be a lot a variation in peoples’ experience — you would probably be advised to slaughter a chicken and sprinkle the warm blood over your laptop first (it can’t hurt)
ndiswrapper
I used the ndiswrapper route as the native OSS driver did not work for me. Also note that I am running KDE (kubuntu)

1. Download the latest driver package from hp.com. NB This is distributed as a Windows exe file but you can extract it using wine (sudo apt-get install wine), the file will end up in somewhere like ~/.wine/drive_c/SWSetup/SP34152A/
2. Make sure the native driver is disabled (instructions on URL above)
3. Run ndiswrapper -i … (as explained in URL above) but use the HP driver package you downloaded
4. In System settings/Network settings/ make sure the eth1 interface is configured for dhcp and then disabled.
5. Install KWiFiManager
6. Use kWifi Manager to confgure your WiFi connection and then activate it.

Please note that I did not follwo such a direct route so I have limited confidence this would work exactly as documented. I took me 3 days of fiddling around so please be patient.

Handy Hack: Making the most of limited hardware

I have recently been setting up an old PC as a backup system for my office enviroment. However 10 year old hardware does have it’s limitations so I had to go through a few hoops to get it to my liking.

1. Install latest Debian as Ubuntu got a little upset with the old BIOS and disk drives
2. Make sure that the system has sshd installed, i.e. apt-get install ssh
3. Stop the graphical login running by executing update-rc.d -f gdm remove
4. Install xfce4 (it uses less resources than KDE or GNOME), apt-get install xfce4
5. Make xfce4 the X window manager by creating a file ~/.Xsession with the line ‘exec xfce4-seesion‘

Now you can log onto the Linux console and type startx or use a remote X server display, e.g. X11 on OS/X using ssh X tunnelling.

e.g. ssh -X -l <userName> <machineName>

When using a remote X server there can be problems if you do not start some programs in an X term displayed by the X server and for which you started your X tunnel. e.g. xclock does not care, GNUCash crashes the X server. So make sure your X server displays an X term of some description.

A big thanks to the Bell Labs team

Dennis Ritchie Home Page

Dennis M. Ritchie

The C programming language and the UNIX operating system both came out of Bell Laps in the 70’s. I and many other owe a big debt to Dennis and the teams that he was part of. I have used UNIX, Linux and OS/X for years; and for a long time earned a living as a C programmer. The influence of the C language is still being felt after more than 30 years.

Dennis’ home page lists a lot of resources for those with a historical interest.

I was lucky enough to meet and chat to Dennis for an extended period when he visited the UKUUG Winter conference in 1997. A very interesting man who never tired of answering my questions.

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Handy Hack: Compare backups with the original

macosxhints.com - Compare directories via diff

Compare directories via diff

A useful shell hack to compare two sets of directories for differences. Should work on Linux as well.

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Hacking the meat and Second Life at the same time

This post is specially for my son Jack.

Jonathon Oxter has a video on Google showing how to connect the real world (electric lights, RFID chips embedded in the body etc.) to things in the Second Life game

It’s an hour long and very, very, geeky — but it’s Oh So Cool.

Tux is now doing cross marketing deals

When I was browsing in a local bookshop today I saw the Linux mascot, Tux, now appearing on the front of Australian Women’s’ Weekly cookery books.

Wow! the geeks have become domesticated.

I wonder if they remembered to acknowledge Larry’s copyright?

Here is a link to their website

Thinking of downgrading to Windows and coLinux

I know I’ve waffled on about this before, but with 98% of the world running Windows it’s becoming a pain in the posterior to be running a technically superior operating system, especially with coLinux being such a great solution for those times when you need a proper platform (plus someone seems to have fixed the link to the Windows port of svk). As well as the issues relating to mobile device synchronisation etc. I often run into problems because evaluation software is only supplied for Windows.

I think by the end of the week I shall be in Windows land, with coLinux used for GnuCash and Linux development. I’ll use MS Outlook (supplied with my Smartphone) as a PIM and Windows OpenOffice. Of course I’ll need to add a stack of goodies to get something almost as good, things like a shell, a decent editor, a PDF driver, some development tools etc., etc.

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Update — well it appears that Optus/Samsung does not supply MS Outlook with their phone, so I might as well stay with Linux and Evolution with Windows under VMware

The force is still with me (I hope)

Connecting your Windows Mobile 2005 device via USB (usb-rndis-lite) - SynCE-Wiki

These instructions let you connect your Windows Mobile 2005 device, via USB, to your computer, using the usb-rdnis-lite kernel module

I whined a few days about the prospect of having to downgrade to Windows (from Linux) in order to get proper use from my new Windows Mobile 5 phone.

However it appears that people have trod the path before for me and I hope to running a fully integrated desktop/phone soon. My expectation is that I should be able to synchronise:

• Contacts
• Tasks
• Diary
• Podcasts from my podcatcher
• Music from my music library
• Photographs from my ‘phone camera

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Not just blokes have ego problems

Linux.com | Linuxchix coordinator resigns amidst controversy

top leader of Linuxchix resigned yesterday in the midst of a controversy over her leadership style.

I thought this type of bullshit was the exclusive preserve of male dominated organisations such as Debian!

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Feisty Fawn after 6 weeks

Linux « Alec the Geek

The new release of Ubuntu is out and I’m keen to upgrade

As mentioned previously Feisty Fawn (that Ubuntu Linux 7.04 to the great unwashed out the there) came out and I upgraded. What’s the verdict?

It all pretty much good, the following things work:

• Suspend and hibernate without needing to install Envy
• GoogleEarth (used to have major graphics problems)
• WiFi (it’s either the same or better — hard to tell) using Ndiswrapper
• Windows CE synchronisation using these instructions
• Playing Windows media without installing Automatix
• Java, using these instructions

If your in the market for a Linux distro it’s very much a recommended option for both newbies and power users.

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Linus (sic) is a tier one platform

When looking at technologies like .NET my constant whine is that they are not cross platform unlike J2EE (I don’t really consider Mono to be a full plug in replacement). i.e. .NET only runs on Windows. There are other examples of course.

However the problem runs both ways — many tools (e.g. svn, git, GNUCash, etc) do not run as well on OS/X or Windows as they do on Linux.

For a wandering minstrel such as myself , this makes the choice of personal tools for accounting, development, etc. a curious set of compromises.

Or usually, to hell with compromise and just pick the one that looks cool on Linux (and of course Linus is the father of Linux)

I just saved A$4 500!

Over the last few weeks I have been suffering from a serious case of Mac lust. However a quick enquiry on the local Perl Mongers list elicited a few pithy words, from less giddy heads than mine, showing that I should give myself a good slap and be happy with my Ubuntu system (which is superior in many ways).

Thanks Guys and Gals!

Handy Hack:How to install Perl modules on Linux

An excellent series of posts on the Melbourne Perl Mongers mailing list on the correct way to install Perl modules on your RPM or Deb based distro.

Now I know what I was doing wrong and how to fix it. Thanks Mongers

Update: I thought the information was so good I slapped it into Perl Net.

Handy Hack: Configure correct version of Java in Ubuntu

When you install anything related to Java in Ubuntu (e.g. Eclipse) then it insists on installing the GNU Java compatibility layer (Java 1.4). If you remove it to try and force your shiny new Sun Java 1.6 (for instance) then things break in apt :-(.

So let apt fix it by re-installing gcj and then run the command sudo update-alternatives --config java and select the correct version of Java you want use.

YMMV

I think update-alternatives bears closer scrutiny.

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Well that’s my weekend screwed!

Slashdot | Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Released

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Released

The new release of Ubuntu is out and I’m keen to upgrade - I’m hoping for much better Wi-Fi support (I have a BMC card) and some fancy 3D desktop effects.

As I have messed my system around so much I think the sensible option is to reformat my disk and re-load from scratch. (thank goodness that most of my work is on  a SVN server and my email is still the servers).

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Handy Hack: Connect Linux to a MAC OS X Tiger (10.4) attached printer

Tiger comes with CUPS installed so:

1. Enable printer sharing in the System Preferences/Printer Setup tool on the Mac
2. At the Mac terminal (Applications/Utilities in Finder) issue the command lpq localhost which will list the name of your CUPS printer queues
3. On your Linux system use the printer administration utility to connect to the printer as http://<Mac_IP_Address>:631/printers/<cupsQueueName>, e.g. http://192.168.0.2:631/printers/DESKJET_640C

Updated April 2008
On some clients the URL’s seem to be case sensitive so enter them carefully.

What I add to Linux that helps make it better

As a follow up to a post I made back in 2002

What I add to Windows that helps make it better « Alec the Geek

I have recenlty had to rebuid my machine from scratch and this is what I feel the need to install.

I thought I would outline the extra goodies I use on my Linux system:

1. GnuCash accounting software
2. Eclipse (not used very much, but can be handy to have around sometimes)
3. The Java SDK
4. BOUML for UML modelling
5. Freemind, and now VYM, mind mapping software
6. I still prefer Adobe’s Acrobat reader to the OSS versions supplied with Linux
7. Evolution is my PIM and email client (but KDE Kontact is also good), not an extra goody per se, but you need to choose which PIM to use. Evolution is the default on Ubuntu anyway
8. gworldclock to get the time in multiple time zones
9. Skype to chat to my friends all over the world
10. Automatix for Ubuntu to I can access all those pesky Windows media files people keep sending me
11. Mozilla Composer is still my favourite HTML editor
12. esvn for Subversion
13. svk for distributed version control
14. Envy to install my ATI Graphics driver — it does in such a way that suspend now works correctly.

Pretty much everything else is already there by default.

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