Very soon... hopefully before the end of this week, I will be the owner of a new mobile phone.  Not just any phone my friends, but a phone that uses the linux kernel.

http://www.htc.com/www/product/magic/overview.html

You can practically smell the panic. "Moonlight was undertaken by Novell as part of an agreement with Microsoft and with the support of Microsoft."

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Software/6921.html

I currently use MPD as my preferred media player, as it runs on my central machine, and I can easily control it from any other machine on our home network.

Now, occasionally, one wishes to just turn on the computer, and without logging in and doing all that admin, get some music playing / skip a song or two and adjust the volume to the correct settings.

The problem is that the first thing that loads up is GDM, which does not know what to do when you press one of the multimedia key on a multimedia keyboard.

Fortunately, this can be fixed easily using the accessibility framework built into GDM.

Edit the following lines in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf:

AddGtkModules=true
GtkModulesList=/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libkeymouselistener

Next, you need to add entries for each of your multimedia keys in /etc/gdm/modules/AccessKeyMouseEvents.

The entry format is as follows:

keycode num_keypresses keypress_duration timeout command command_args

Where, the command with it's arguments is executed when the key given by keycode is depressed as many times as specified by the number of keypresses for longer than the keypress duration. Note, the command will be run as root, so be sure that it can't do anything destructive!!

For example, my configuration which uses the mpc command to control the mpd daemon is as follows:

XF86AudioNext 1 0 1000 /usr/bin/mpc next
XF86AudioPrev 1 0 1000 /usr/bin/mpc prev
XF86AudioStop 1 0 1000 /usr/bin/mpc stop
XF86AudioPlay 1 0 1000 /usr/bin/mpc toggle
XF86AudioLowerVolume 1 0 1000 /usr/bin/mpc volume -2
XF86AudioRaiseVolume 1 0 1000 /usr/bin/mpc volume +2
XF86AudioMute 1 0 1000 /usr/bin/mpc volume 0

Then restart gdm by executing /etc/init.d/gdm restart

Voila, your multimedia keys should work in GDM!!

If you are not a Linux user and find yourself feeling overwhelmed by your new Linux Netbook (be it an MSI wind, Eee or Acer Aspire One) then fear no longer...  The guys and girls over at Reghardware has some nifty tips to help you out.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/17/netbook_linux_guide_1/

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/28/netbook_linux_guide_2/

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/11/24/netbook_linux_guide_3/

So, 8.10 has arrived. I'm not likely to be giving it a go on anything but my testbed desktop at home, but I'm curious to hear what you early adopter whippersnappers have to say about it. Voice your opinions via the comments!

One thing that caught my eye reading one of the reviews was a bit alarming: "Incidentally, 8.10 does away entirely with the X.org configuration file, long the bane of newbies but also the savior of more experienced users. The idea is that the graphical subsystem "just works", and if it doesn't you're supposed to file a bug report."

X has come a hell of a long way since my earliest experiences with it (which frequently included blacking out in a terrible rage and waking up in a room full of inexplicably murdered computer parts) but I'd still question this move. I've had display issues necessitating xorg.conf hacking as recently as 8.04, so I hope they've done their homework.

Phoronix thinks so. It's Wirth's Law in action, of course... Ubuntu isn't immune just because it's open source, unfortunately.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_bench_2008&num=1

Looks like Dell have finally released their Mini 9 netbook with Linux. Bit of a raw deal though, I think I'd rather have the XP version and just install Ubuntu over it ;-)

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/06/dell_releases_ubuntu_scc/

Read the Introduction

If I hadn't had a pretty good idea of what I was doing when I started this adventure, I'd have been lost in the GNU/Linux jungle and have been eaten by the cannibals native to those parts. It would have been an unpleasant and gory end to me and my expedition.

My choice of metaphor certainly points to the fact that only a seasoned adventurer would have come through the jungle to the promised-land unscathed. In my case I was slightly scathed -- especially by the talons of the Thunderbird and the electrical strikes of its Lightning bolts. I wasn't killed, but that was only because I'd fought with creature in the past, and I knew where to strike at its soft underbelly.

Those novice adventures would have been struck down by the wild Thunderbird of the Gnu/Linux jungle, never to recover. Had they survived the encounter, they'd have returned to their cities where tamer Thunderbirds are kept safely in captivity, behind reinforced Windows.
Even if they manage to avoid the mighty winged beast, and are met with clear, Lightning-free skies, these green jungle explorers will continuously hear the beat of the Samba drums, resonating through the air, vibrating the tendrils that network between the trees of the jungle, and just generally creating a powerful sense of unease.
Though some may not even notice the drumming, a great many would flee from the source of the noise, back-back-back to their safe buildings and Windows.

Turns out there is a beaten path through the jungle, and mostly the Samba dancing, drum-beating natives along that path are quite friendly and helpful. Woe betide you should you have intially entered the jungle, all Gutsy and rearing to go and later crossed over on to the beaten Hardy path, instead of leaving the jungle and getting on to the Hardy path from the point that it first enters the jungle.
Turns out the friendly Samboin natives only live a certain way along the path. The Samboin cannibal tribe live deeper in the jungle, just about where you'll end up when you Gutsily take the short-cut through the jungle to the Hardy path.

I had to battle those cannibals, but I came out of the alive, and the cannibals no longer found me appetising once I figured out how to manipulate their Samba dances.

Even without the cannibals, the Hardy pathway needs maintenance. Nothing serious -- but if the adventurer isn't cautious he or she is likely to trip and stumble over the potholes from time to time.

Ultimately, compared to the safety and familiarity of the civilised world, where glass has been invented, the Gnu/Linux jungle is a terrifying place. There are less scary places in the jungle. Clearings and friendly tribes. Places where you can safely wander and have a picnic, where no wild beasts or angry natives will harass you. They aren't particularly interesting places in the jungle, and you find you can't also do the things you'd like to do in those places.

Fortunately there are also quite a few seasoned adventurers wandering about in the darker corners of the jungle who are quite willing to help protect those new to the jungle from its dangers. They pass through the protected areas from time to time, and so the new guys can hook up with them. They'll show the new guys the vines, and how to swing gracefully from one branch to another. But the new guys still need to be willing to grab those vines, throw caution to the wind, and swing high in the air from tree to tree without a safety net.

Most people are too scared to swing high in the air with no safety net, but the jungle is of limited use at the moment if you aren't willing to try. Plus, what about the frigging cannibals?

Enough with the metaphors. I think you get the point. Migrating to Linux from windows for working environments isn't a trivial exercise, and it sure as hell didn't "just work" for me. However, since I have a fairly good idea of what I was doing, I could make it work. Switching isn't recommended unless you know (or one of those seasoned adventurers knows) how to fix up things when they don't go quite according to plan.

And now for the boring parts, where I actually explain what I did with the computer, and in some cases offer solutions to my problems. You can try the solutions if you are suffering from similar problems, but I don't promise they'll work for you.

If you aren't looking for technical solutions, but just want to read on, feel free. I'm afraid I haven't made much effort to be particularly witty in the sections that follow.

Email: Thunderbird
I had expected that transferring my email wouldn't cause any headaches. Thunderbird is cross-platform, so just transfer the user files from Windows' Documents and Settings to Linux's home folder, right? No problems, right?

Bah!

Copying all the user files from Windows to Linux actually works perfectly, as long as you aren't using any plugins. All the mail is imported correctly.

Assuming you are running a Debian-based system, the procedure would be:

1. Install Thunderbird, using whatever works best for you. This works for me: $ aptitude install thunderbird
2. Run Thunderbird. This creates the .mozilla-thunderbird directory in your home directory.
3. Cancel the new account setup dialogues, and close Thunderbird.
4. Copy all the files in C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\[random number].default\ to /home/[username]/.mozilla-thunderbird/[random number].default
5. Restart Thunderbird. All your mail and account settings should be there.

If you had installed plugins, particularly Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar, you'll be in for a serious skull-cracking migraine time.

What it came down to was that I was running Lightning 0.8 and Provider 0.4, and they required a particular library that is missing from the default installation of Ubuntu 8.04.
I fixed it by installing libstdc5, as per this conversation
$ sudo aptitude install libstdc5

It wasn't as easy as I've made it out to be. I trawled the internet for quite some time before I found that Google Groups discussion. I doubted the wisdom of continuing my transition to a more free and open working environment, and had to continue working in Windows for a while until I'd worked out the problems. I stuck to my resolve though.

Network file-sharing: Samba
My office environment requires that I share my projects over the LAN, and have at least one location where other users can copy files to my computer. I also need to be able to access everyone else's shared folders. The good thing was that accessing other people's stuff was easy, because everything is set up to allow guest access. Well done to the Samba project

I've got things in a dual-boot setup. This means that a lot of my documents are still on the Windows partition, with the disc in the NTFS format.

Ubuntu stubbornly refused to allow me to share anything on the NTFS format -- at least not via the Gnome desktop environment. Since I needed to get work done, and people needed access to certain of my files, I just copied them over to my home folder and shared them from there. This worked fine, since my user account was now the owner of the files.

This problem stemmed from me upgrading to 8.04, and not doing a fresh install. Because Gutsy used fstab to mount the windows drive automatically, it had set umask parameters that prevented others from accessing the files. If you install Hardy from scratch, you won't encounter this problem because hardy doesn't automatically mount the drives. The user mounts the drives, and so the user has permissions to let others access the partitions.

If you have upgraded, and are encountering this problem, the work around is to remove or comment out the relevant entries in fstab, like so:

First backup fstab
$ sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

Then, using nano or your favourite text editor:
$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

Then, run around screaming.
$ screaming!!!!!

No. Skip the screaming. You've probably done it already anyway. Instead, rather add a hash (#) to the beginning of the offending line (or lines) in fstab.

For example, let's say the offending partition is /dev/sda2
It's line in fstab is something like this:

UUID=ABCD1234567890AB /media/windows  ntfs-3g    defaults,umask=002,gid=46 0       1

Pop one of these suckers '#' at the beginning, like so:
# UUID=ABCD1234567890AB /media/windows  ntfs-3g    defaults,umask=002,gid=46 0       1

Reboot!

Actually, rebooting isn't necessary. You can just unmount and remount the volume, but I'm not going into how to do that.

After that, the partition isn't automatically mounted -- you need to do it yourself via Gnome -- but at least sharing files works as expected. This is also the default behaviour of Hardy Heron.
If you want the volume to mount automatically, and to be able to share things as expected, this worked for me:

Edit the fstab line you previously turned into a comment so that it rather looks like this:
UUID=ABCD1234567890AB /media/windows ntfs-3g rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,allow_other 0 1

That'll make the volume mount when the computer starts up, and you'll be able to share folders with other network users as expected. Be warned though -- if you don't allow guest access to the files, you'll be in store for some painful times with smb.conf and smbpasswd. They won't be insurmountable, but they may not be filled with pleasantries.

A final note: when using Hardy, make sure that you install all of the Recommended updates -- not just the security updates. This is crucial if you want to be able to work on files over the network, without copying them to your local machine.
Gnome has recently changed their virtual file system, and not all applications had been ported to the new system when Hardy was released. I think this is the reason for the issues. It wasn't an optimal situation to be in. For example, I couldn't open documents with openoffice over the network. This made checking which document I wanted to work with a laborious process. In the end the best option was to copy the file across the network, open it locally, check the file was the one I wanted. Discover it wasn't. Rinse. Repeat.
 

Unblinkered, honest reviews of Linux.

Although, I think "hate" is a strong word. Perhaps he should have gone with "Linux Scathers" because the author clearly uses linux a lot, and wishes certain things worked easier.

In an effort to continue evaluating and reviewing different Open Source Operating Systems, I downloaded and installed OpenSolaris 2008.05 onto the test partition of my notebook.  FAIL

It was rather late in the evening and I was tired, so when I installed it, I forgot to keep an eye out for the grub options during the install.  This means that when I ejected the CD and rebooted, all I got was the grub menu list from OpenSolaris, I had no way of getting back into my Ubuntu installation :-(

Google is your friend, and I found this....

http://www.sorgonet.com/linux/grubrestore/

Worked a charm! and I was back up and running in no time, a short summary follows:

From the OpenSolaris grub menu presented to me, I hit "c" to enter the grub command line interface.  I know my Ubuntu was installed in (hd0,1) and so entered root (hd0,1) and the did setup (hd0) which reinstalled my Ubuntu grub on the master boot record of my harddrive - easy as pie!

If you are stuck without a grub menu (ie you had to reinstall Windows on your dual boot and it overwrote your grub install) you can use any live cd, open a terminal, type grub and continue from there.

Review of OpenSolaris will be up some time next week once I've had a chance to tinker.

I've been testing Openoffice.org's compatibility with Microsoft Office on Microsoft's ubiquitous platform. There are a couple of formatting niggles, but nothing that bothers me too much. I work for a small company, and MS Office is hugely overpowered for our needs. We don't use MS Access. We have no VBScripted Excel files, and since I'm the most tech-savvy person at the company, I don't plan on writing anything using those tools -- ever.

I was already using Thunderbird as my email client, and its Lightning plugin for calendar functions.

I was using Tomboy Notes' window port for my note-taking tasks (and it was annoying me a little because the windows port is only up to version 0.3 or so, which is buggy and hugely inferior to the latest Ubuntu version, 0.10.2).

The only applications that might have proven to be tricksy to run on Linux were the more specialised GPS and GIS software -- Garmin's Mapsource and ESRI's ArcExplorer.

According to the Wine application database it was likely that Mapsource would run well using wine, and ArcExplorer apparently had a java version that would run natively in Linux.

Effectively I had no reason to work on that other platform, so I decided that I might as well move all of my workplace productivity efforts over to Linux.

Expect a series of articles recording my migration from Windows to Ubuntu Linux at work. It won't be a hugely detailed description. Don't expect a step by step guide of moving from Windows to Linux.

Certain aspects of the migration will be highlighted. Things that went well, things that didn't go so well, and my overall impression of productivity in Linux.
 

Every two weeks, for the past 4 years, the award winning LugRadio team put out a podcast talking about the latest linux / oss news and having very colourful discussions about their very polarised views on all things linux.

They have even had live weekend events, which, at the time I wished I was able to attend, and am now very sad that I didn't.

Guys, the OSS community is going to miss you.

More info here and here.

Fun :-)

http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map

Gaming in Linux, oh boy. A controversial topic at best, an invitation to an insane flamefest at worst. Still, one that should be talked about, as it remains for many folks the last big stumbling block when converting from Windows. They can put up with a surprising amount of crap, but you'd be surprised how often their favourite games not working is cited as a reason for people sticking with That Other OS, especially among the more clued-up technorati.

I have to be honest here - a few years ago this was a huge issue for me. I owned PCs primarily to play games, and if they also let me do some work and general personal stuff on the side, well, that was nice but certainly not a deal-breaker. In those days the idea of buying a game and having it not run properly on my machine was unthinkable, and not having the latest bleeding edge video cards and hardware drivers was the sort of thing that kept me up at night. Windows got clean-installed at least once a month, and I lived, breathed and dreamed FPS.

If this is you now, I can save you a long and depressing read through the rest of this guide - install Windows and Linux dual boot, and boot to Windows to play your games. Simple as that. Linux has improved enormously, but it isn't quite there yet.

If however you're more like I am nowadays, you try to take a more balanced approach to life, and the computer is a general purpose hub of various activities of which gaming is just one. In such a milieu, Linux as the sole OS is much more feasible. It's very capable of doing everything Windows does in the way of software development, web browsing, email, office apps, photos, music, video, etc etc etc, and it additionally is able to run a fair share of games if you're willing to be persistent and tolerate the occasional failure.

Here follows a bullet list of what I've tried, mostly just noted down as I was doing it, so apologies if it comes over a bit terse. I started with an unremarkable clean install of Hardy Heron on my desktop PC at home, which is now getting quite long in the tooth for gaming - shame :P. It's a Shuttle XPC with an AMD Athlon64 3200+ (the 2GHz 1024k cache version) on an nForce 150 platform, an Nvidia GeForce 6800 128MB with some, er, "hacks" (less said about that the better ;-), and various other hardware bits that no one cares about and aren't germane to the discussion below. I'll also warn you now of some bias: I enjoy first person shooters. I know other kinds of games exist, but (a) I suck at them, and (b) I really suck at them, both of which result in me usually not enjoying them very much. There are exceptions of course, but that's a fair comment on the general state of my gaming predilections. This list is also not entirely complete, as I haven't tested either Diablo 2 or StarCraft, both of which are currently sitting at work. I can tell you that Blizzard's never made native installers for those games, so you'll be stuck using wine which I don't like much anyway (more on this later).

Right, let's get started...

Drivers:
Video - Installed NVidia GF drivers from Ubuntu restricted drivers manager. I don't even know what version they are (eish Reynolds - how far the mighty have fallen), but I assume they're reasonably current, and this way Ubuntu looks after updating them for me.
Sound - Whatever default OSS drivers installed with Ubuntu for the onboard sound. I only use stereo speakers anyway, so fine for my purposes.

Nexuiz:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native, written for Linux
- Install from Ubuntu repositories
- Game runs well

Alien Arena:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native, written for Linux
- Install from Ubuntu repositories
- Game runs well

Tremulous:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native, written for Linux
- Install from Ubuntu repositories
- Game runs well

Quake 3:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native
- Downloaded id Software installer from http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/q3a/
- Ran installer w/sudo
- Copied pk3 file(s) from Windows install CD to <q3installdir>/baseq3
- Game runs well

Doom 3:
- gametype: FPS single player and deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native
- Downloaded id Software installer from http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/
- Ran installer w/sudo
- Copied pk4 file(s) 0 thru 5 from Windows install CD(s) to <d3installdir>/base
- Game runs well

Quake 4:
- gametype: FPS single player and deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native
- Downloaded id Software installer from http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/ (note: large file, ~275MB)
- Created /usr/local/games/quake4/q4base and copied all pk4 file(s) from Windows install CD(s) to it
- Ran installer w/sudo (do it this way around because installer includes patches which overwrite some of the original pk4's)
- Language defaults to spanish! Search for "seta sys_lang" line in ~/.quake4/q4base/Quake4Config.cfg and change to english :)
- Game runs well

Unreal Tournament 1999 (non-GOTY edition):
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native
- Loki games maintains a Linux installer - downloaded and tested, repeatedly gave "bad checksum" error however.
- Turns out Loki installer is broken on Ubuntu 8.04 and a number of modern distros.
- Downloaded the modified installer from http://www.liflg.org/?catid=6&gameid=51
- Ran modified installer w/sudo (requests Windows install CDs as per Windows installer)
- Installed fine, however, run script created in /usr/local/bin has broken paths ("bad substitution" error)
- Created a two-line bash script to cd to the UT install directory and run the executable from there, i.e.
    <code>
    cd /usr/local/games/ut
    ./ut
    </code>
- Game runs, but game speed is too fast and quite erratic (either set game speed to 30-50% when starting new game, or futz with CPU frequency to get it working ok, still erratic though - this appears to be an issue related to modern CPUs, video cards, and vidcard drivers and is not unique to Linux - may need vsync or other hacks to get it working).

Unreal Tournament 2003:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native
- Tried installer on 3rd disk, gives similar checksum error as the installer for UT1999 did.
- Fixing "tail -266" bug in a local copy of linux-installer.sh and running as sudo works to get the install going
- Had to ctrl-c out of the CD key check, which it warns you not to do :), but apparently CD key can be manually entered into <ut2k3installdir>/System/cdkey
- Running from command line starts splash screen, blanks screen for a second or so, and then crashes back to the desktop with lots of "Locking assertion failure" errors - seems like a vidcard driver/opengl error.

Serious Sam - The Second Encounter:
- gametype: FPS single player and deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native (beta)
- Downloaded Loki installer from http://www.liflg.org/?catid=6&gameid=71
- Ran installer w/sudo (needs Windows install CD)
- Game script crashed "ssamtse: line 123:  7198 Aborted" when I ran it.
- Applied the fix here: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-173418.html
- Game runs, a bit too fast (bad for an already fast-paced game!) and occasionally with graphical bugs

HERE BE DRAGONS - A friendly note to readers. I don't much like wine. It's a hacky, messy, best-effort-and-poor-performance way of doing things, especially games, and games (particularly modern ones) that will only run under wine speak to me of developers who aren't interested in giving open source platforms the time of day. As a result I didn't try nearly as hard to get any wine-emulated games working as I did with those that have native versions, so YMMV.

Half-life 1:
- gametype: FPS single player (multiplayer with CounterStrike and other mods)
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

Half-Life 2:
- gametype: FPS single player (multiplayer with CounterStrike and other mods)
- mode: wine
- Installed Steam relatively painlessly using the instructions here
- Steam runs fine, if a bit slow and clunky (that's emulation for ya). I can login and check my account etc as per windows.
- Tried installing Half-Life 2. I have the CD version (5 discs). The instructions at the link above simply initiate a new install of Steam - useless.
- Tried running the hl2.exe install on the first disc via wine. This works and starts the install, unfortunately wine locks the CD mount point so install fails at "insert CD 2".
- Tried copying all CDs to hdd and running install from there. Fails halfway through with an archive extract error.
- Tried the CD install + force-unmount method detailed at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2484355. Install fails, repeatedly asking for CD 2 even when it is inserted and mounted.

Sacrifice:
- gametype: RTS single player
- mode: wine
- Ran install from CD, worked fine and installed the game to ~/.wine/drive_c.
- Game runs, but with major rendering and display errors - tried all three rendering options (wine D3D HAL T&L, wine D3D HAL, and wine D3D RGB), all gave the same result. Also unable to change the resolution from 640x480x16 which annoyingly resets the desktop resolution in the process.

Dungeon Siege 1:
- gametype: RPG single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

Dungeon Siege 2:
- gametype: RPG single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

System Shock 2:
- gametype: FPS/RPG single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

Heretic 2:
- gametype: 3PS single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

So there you are. A bit of a hit and miss affair, but if you enjoy id Software's games (and most other games based on their engines) you're golden. Epic aren't quite at the polished point of Linux support id are at, but they're catching up fast, and with rumours that even Valve are at the preliminary stages of beginning to consider the possibility of forming a committee to evaluate the consideration that they might one day make native Linux versions of Steam and the Source engine, things are definitely moving in the right direction.

I'd love to chat more, but I'm off to blast some Strogg now. Have a good one :-)

Neat :)

http://www.geek.com/splashtop-linux-desktop-to-appear-on-every-asus-moth...