Tag: Linux

Suse Studio

I’ve been trying out Suse Studio over the last couple of days. It’s a build service for livecds and software appliances, and it really is so easy to use that I think most non-technical users could get to grips with it. It’s invite only at present, but I got an invite just by asking (and I’m not exactly known for my love of the distro).

I’ve built a 300mb livecd with a very minimalistic Gnome install plus Dropbox, and it seems to do everything I want it to do. And it only took about 20 minutes in total to do.

I think this is something I will play with some more when I’m on holiday.

Upgrading Ubuntu 8.04 to OpenOffice.org 3.1

This guide has all the required info, and worked like a charm on my netbook running 8.04 and my laptop running 9.04 (although it was simpler than the guide suggests in both cases). I’ll hopefully write a more comprehensive guide at some point soon, because I think 3.1 is something that people should consider upgrading to.

I’m really not noticing the fact that I’m running 8.04 on my Dell Mini, largely because I’ve upgraded most of what I use regularly to later versions.

Updating and installing software on Foresight Linux

I’ve just installed the latest version of Foresight on my spare laptop, so I thought I’d investigate the package manager, conary, which is something I’ve never used before, but which looks like it could be as useful as apt and urpmi.

It’s really quite simple. To update to the latest version of all installed packages, type:

$ sudo conary updateall

And to install a specific package, type:

$ sudo conary update packagename

I’ll write more when I’ve explored further.

Review – Mandriva 2009.1 (KDE edition)

I’ve finally got round to installing the KDE version of Mandriva 2009.1 in a VM on my laptop. I’d been holding off, because I don’t really use KDE, and I wasn’t too impressed with how the other major distributions had implemented KDE4 (which is basically a total revision of every aspect). Happily, I can easily say that this is the most usable implementation of KDE4 I’ve ever come across, and it does a very good job of not getting in my way whilst still enabling me to be productive.

The desktop has seen some major customisations, as is usual with Mandriva (see http://www2.mandriva.com/ for a screen shot), and it actually looks and feels like a more polished version of KDE 3.5 (the last version of KDE I used for more than a couple of hours). There are sensible defaults, and I think the only application I would want to add is Thunderbird, because I still really don’t like Kmail.

But could I use it full time? Almost certainly yes, and if I wasn’t very tied to Gnome and the Gnome libraries and applications then I’d consider making the switch. As it is, I’ll happily keep it as a VM, which gives me the option to have a play with KDE4 every now and again without having to make any major life changes.

Converting Quicktime movies using Linux

Another “so I don’t forget it” post.

Converting Quicktime (.mov) files to Ogg Theora (.ogv) is now rather simple (although takes a while).

Firstly, install ffmpeg2theora (it should be available for most distros).

Then just launch it from the command line. The syntax is:

ffmpeg2theora name_of_file.mov

Or to do a whole directory:

ffmpeg2theora *.mov

Easy.

Changing hostname in Mandriva

I’ve been doing a bit of work on Mandriva recently, and I always forget that there are two places you need to change the host name before it “takes”.

in /etc/sysconfig/network add the following line:

HOSTNAME=hostname

Where hostname is whatever you want the computer to be called.

Then in /etc/hosts just add the hostname after localhost on the first (and probably only) line in the file. It should look something like:

127.0.0.1       hostname localhost

Where again hostname is the name of the computer.

Do this, reboot, and all should be well.

Synching with folders outside of /dropbox

This could probably be summed up in a few words (the words being “use symlinks”).

Basically, what I wanted to do was to sync several folders outside my dropbox folder (for various reasons). The solution was to create a shortcut in the folder I wanted to sync, and then moving the link to my dropbox folder.  This can be done of the command line by typing something like:

ln -s /home/folder/to/sync /home/andy/dropbox/synched_folder

This could be used in all sorts of ways, some of which I may blog about over the next couple of weeks.

Using wcid instead of NetworkManager on Ubuntu 8.10

This post came about due to an issue with NetworkManager connecting to our wpa-enterprise authenticated network at work, but demonstrates that there is more than one choice when it comes to almost everything on Linux. It’s not too fiddly, and I’ll hopefully have a rebuild of Ubuntu incorporating these changes within 24 hours.

First off, you need to add a line to your sources list, by issuing the following command:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line at the bottom of the file:

deb http://apt.wicd.net intrepid extras

Then press ctrl+o to save and then ctrl+x to quit and then issue the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wcid

This will download wcid (a network management tool that doesn’t suffer issues connecting to enterprise level networks), uninstall NetworkManager and then install wcid. At some point in this process you will lose network connectivity, but this is fine.

To make wcid start at boot, go to System > Preferences > Sessions and add a new item to startup. The path for the application is:

/opt/wicd/tray.py

Reboot, and you should find that wcid adds an applet similar to nm-applet which will allow you to view available networks, and connect and configure them. I’ve tested this with my EeePC 701 and an Acer Aspire One (both running Ubuntu 8.10), and it is known to work (with a bit of tweaking) on Fedora 10 as well.

How to make a totally up to date bootable USB version of Ubuntu

I’ve written these instructions (371.6 KB PDF) for work, but think they might be useful in all sorts of other situations.

Basically it boils down to:

  1. Use Ubuntu Customization Kit to update all the packages in Ubuntu and add/remove packages as required.
  2. Use the USB creating tool in Ubuntu 8.10 to transfer your newly created iso to USB.

On my USB I’ve also added several portable apps, so as to ensure I’ve got everything I need for remote support of misbehaving Windows PCs.

Of course, you could just make the USB version first and then customise it using the free space on the USB, but this method allows you to remove software before transfering it to USB, which makes it useful for smaller devices (and for the sort of customised image you might want to install to a netbook).

EeePC

I’ve finally got round to getting an EeePC, and so far I’m really impressed. I’ve installed the latest version of Mandriva on it, and have a very functional Gnome desktop, which does everything I need it to do.

Installing Mandriva was a breeze – it was just a case of changing the BIOS to boot from my external CD drive, and also to enable wireless at boot so that the right modules were loaded. I’ve uninstalled a load of stuff I don’t need, added a couple of things, and at present I’ve still got 1.2gb free on the 4gb internal flash card.

I plan on getting another 4gb card and installing the original EeePC OS onto it for testing purposes.