February to Hardy?

Well, here we are in February and I’ve hardly touched Ubuntu in the past month. The Photoshop projects that just have to be done (still another couple of weeks out on that) have kept me busy.  In the midst of my projects, I’ve noticed that Vista is actually getting faster. “WTF, weren’t you just complaining about how slow Vista is?” you must be saying. Well here me out. I took the Vista SP1 RC a while back and I’ve noticed that booting from full hibernate is now very fast on Vista. Also wake from sleep is lightning quick…almost as quick as my wife’s Macbook! Not only that, but network file copies are moving along a bit better now. I’m waiting until the true final release candidate is out to upgrade the server, but as far as my laptop goes, SP1 is turning out to make Vista actually usable. Now if they can only get to SP2 in the next couple of months…

Also, I’ve gotten used to my Yahoo widgets on the desktop. I tried the gdesklets thing on Ubuntu, but they just didn’t look nice. “Who cares?” screams the peanut gallery. For those of you functionalism aficionados, don’t get me wrong, I’m in the trenches with you guys. But I’m slowly starting to see how having some nice eye candy makes my computing life better and more enjoyable, not to mention more functional. This is rather important since I’m on my various rigs at least 8 hours a day, if not more. So let’s look at the lay of the Vista land for me:

You’ll see that I have RocketDock and my various Yahoo widgets running. I check the stock ticker thing about 63 times per minute even though my portfolio is a buy and hold sort of outfit. Also the RocketDock is GREAT. It mimics how the most important part of the Mac UI (for OSX, OS9ers please go home to your straw huts and crazed ranting). I truly enjoy using it because I can customize all of the little icons with great ease. Sure I burnt about a day looking for and downloading every free icon set on the planet and then another day organizing them (I’ve yet to convert the mac-only icons, but we’ll get there someday), and a couple of minutes picking which ones represent my apps the best. Frivolous? Maybe. But all of that upfront investment in my time has led to allowing me to actually have a tiny ounce more of computing joy each and every time I use my m1330. Also both of these helpful little tools are great timesavers. About 98% of the time, I launch apps from RocketDock which is much faster than VistaBubble->All Programs->{sift….sift….sift….ah there it is} or even VistaBubble->{type some random word in the search bar…sift…ah there it is}.

This is not to say that I haven’t kept abreast of the Ubuntu forefront (especially in regards to the XPS m1330). Let’s see…oh biggest news EVAR–well at least for those of us that own a Dell XPS m1330′s with the Intel 965 graphics chipset and want to run Ubuntu.  Apparently Hardy Heron has a fix that allows compiz fusion effects to work on our computers!  If you recall, I tried to get this working and eventually found out that it was busted deep down in the guts of yee old driver and gave up. According to this bug report, it seems that the issue has been fixed or at least mitigated, but it does not seem to be performing well (nor does it seem to look very nice). The very last comment by Timo seems to suggest that the performance enhancements that are needed will not be going into Hardy Heron and thus they may actually remove compiz support. While I lament the thought, I guess it is the right choice since they’re in alpha trials already.

Also, I’ve jettisoned the Gimpshop enhancements for Gimp, but have not had a chance to learn the standard Gimp UI. Things are definitely different. I’ll have to track down some Photoshop->Gimp command map or video tutorials after I’m done with the urgent projects on my plate at the moment.

Anyway, the fact that compiz may actually be working on Hardy Heron means I may take an early upgrade and see how it works.  Maybe I will be able to get a dock thing working and may have to see if I can jimmy gdesklets to run Yahoo widgets.  Sounds like some good fun after my urgent Photoshoppery is complete.

Giving up on compiz

I’ve tried to get compiz fusion running on the m1330 but since this guy shipped with the Intel 965 graphics chipset, it looks like there will be no compiz for me for a while.  I’m hoping there is a fix for the next Ubuntu release in spring 2008, but I’m not holding my breath.  The eye candy would have been nice, but I’ll get over it.  After all, I just want an OS that boots fast, shuts down fast, and is generally stable.  Vista really isn’t any of those things.  I’ve found that booting up is not really faster than XP, shutting down is still horrendously slow, and stability is not its strong suit.  I’ve had all sorts of trouble playing video over my home network in Vista that magically do not happen in Ubuntu.  Chalk one up for the penguin.

xorg.conf busted again

I took an update a day or two ago and wasn’t paying much attention. Today, I booted up my XPS m1330 and found that I can’t get out of 640×480…argh!!

It seems that my xorg.conf was overwritten by something that I installed over the last day or two and it just took a reboot to take effect. Luckily, whatever overwrote the file made a backup copy so I make a copy of the messed up file by doing:

sudo cp xorg.conf xorg.conf.messedup
and then copying my working file back then rebooting:

sudo rm xorg.conf
sudo cp xorg.conf.1 xorg.conf
sudo reboot

Anyway, that seemed to do the trick. I asked my work buddy who figured out the original work around for the XPS m1330 to let me post it online and I’ve included it here:

# xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier	"Generic Keyboard"
Driver		"kbd"
Option		"CoreKeyboard"
Option		"XkbRules"	"xorg"
Option		"XkbModel"	"pc105"
Option		"XkbLayout"	"us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier	"Configured Mouse"
Driver		"mouse"
Option		"CorePointer"
Option		"Device"		"/dev/input/mice"
Option		"Protocol"		"ImPS/2"
Option		"ZAxisMapping"		"4 5"
Option		"Emulate3Buttons"	"true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier	"Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver		"synaptics"
Option		"SendCoreEvents"	"true"
Option		"Device"		"/dev/psaux"
Option		"Protocol"		"auto-dev"
Option		"HorizScrollDelta"	"0"
Option		"SHMConfig"		"true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver		"wacom"
Identifier	"stylus"
Option		"Device"	"/dev/input/wacom"
Option		"Type"		"stylus"
Option		"ForceDevice"	"ISDV4"		# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver		"wacom"
Identifier	"eraser"
Option		"Device"	"/dev/input/wacom"
Option		"Type"		"eraser"
Option		"ForceDevice"	"ISDV4"		# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver		"wacom"
Identifier	"cursor"
Option		"Device"	"/dev/input/wacom"
Option		"Type"		"cursor"
Option		"ForceDevice"	"ISDV4"		# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier	"Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller"
Driver		"intel"
Option		"monitor-TV" "TVOutput"
BusID		"PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier  "TVOutput"
Option      "Ignore" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier	"Generic Monitor"
Option		"DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier	"Default Screen"
Device		"Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller"
Monitor		"Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth	24
SubSection "Display"
Modes		"1280x800"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier	"Default Layout"
Screen		"Default Screen"
InputDevice	"Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice	"Configured Mouse"
InputDevice     "stylus"	"SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice     "cursor"	"SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice     "eraser"	"SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice	"Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Wireless workaround?

Well, streaming Pandora (and anything else for that matter) seems to keep the wireless connection alive. I think things go bad when we leave the wireless adapter idle. After reading more of the oreilly post mentioned in my previous post, I found that I have the exact same issue with the ndiswrapper (not exactly sure what that is, but sounds like something important). I’ve therefore initiated one of the few commands I know

sudo apt-get update

then I’ve run

sudo apt-get upgrade

and now I’m here…about an hour later, still online, still listening to Pandora (Nelly Furtado: Say It Right…man Timbaland knows how to get booties shaking), watching the sunset over the Free Speech Cafe at UC Berkeley, and waiting for the upgrade bits to arrive.

Wireless Update

So far so good. Congratulations, you’re reading my first official post from a linux machine. Underwhelming, I know. Anyway, I was digging around the whole wireless issue and decided to try a fun way to figure out when my wifi connection drops. I am streaming Pandora in the background whilst I compose this post. I’m through my third song and it’s still going strong.

Anyway, a bit more digging and I found a post over at the linux dev center over at oreilly that sort of talks about this issue. You can see it here

In the mean time, I’m going to try to figure out what the heck the post is saying and see if I can get the wifi to drop out on while I’m streaming some tunes.

Wireless not so Gutsy

Holy cow have I had a rough morning with Ubuntu. The wireless connection seems to fail if I leave it idle for a minute or two on my Dell XPS m1330. I wanted to make my first official post FROM Ubuntu this morning (I’m camped out with my work and personal laptop right now in the Anthropology library at UC Berkeley), but have been unable to keep a connection long enough to get it completed. Oh well, I’ve booted back into Vista to post this. I was trying to debug this, but don’t have much more time to dedicate to figuring it out at the moment. Here’s what I’ve found thus far:

a bug has been filed on this issue (#139832), there seems to be a dedicated laptop testing team that I may sacrifice my XPS m1330 to officially since I want Gutsy to “just work” on this really well designed machine. Plus it will give me a chance to learn how to debug things in Linux and really, isn’t that what it’s all about? I kid, I kid. Anyway, back to work (the real kind that pays me, not “WorkBuntu”)