The first Linux release of DojoBuilder beta has been released, after my epic effort at getting Ubuntu 6.10 installed on my Thinkpad. DojoBuilder is an Eclipse RCP based tool for generating customised builds of the Dojo Ajax toolkit. It provides a number of useful utilities for working with Dojo, including checking out the source code from source control (Subversion), configuring the build, and running the build. For information on what it can do, check out my first post on the subject.
This is one of a number of posts detailing how to install Ubuntu 6.10 (codename Edgy) on a Thinkpad X41.
This post explains how to install the Beryl window manager on Ubuntu Edgy. Beryl is a very impressive window manager for Linux that adds many extremely cool effects and themes to the desktop. These include things like a 3D cube workspace switcher, a tab switcher with window preview, many minimize/maximize animations, and much much more. Watch this video to see Beryl in action.
First the Beryl repository must be added. Open a terminal by clicking Applications->Accessories->Terminal
Type sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the two lines
deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy main
deb-src http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy main
Note: If you are installing Ubuntu Feisty (version 7.04), replace the ‘edgy‘ with ‘feisty‘ in the lines above.
For safety’s sake, so that Beryl can be disabled easily later if it turns out to be buggy, create a new Session. Save the file http://www.skynet.ie/~sos/ubuntu/Beryl.desktop to /usr/share/xsessions
When Ubuntu next starts up, you will have the option to use Beryl. To do this, in the log in screen
Click Options->Select Session
Choose Beryl
Click Change Session
To play around with Beryl settings, once logged in click the red diamond icon in the top right corner task bar.
To see the cool cube effect, press Ctrl-Alt-Left and Ctrl-Alt-Right keys. you may only have one workspace open, so add more by right clicking on the Workspace switcher at the bottom right of the screen, choosing “Preferences” and setting the number of workspaces.
To edit or change themes, open System->Preferences->Emerald Theme Manager and play around.
To make double clicking on title bars maximise the window, which on my laptop changed this behaviour to the irritating “collapse window” effect, open System->Preferences->Emerald Theme Manager->Emerald Settings->Titlebar Double-Click-Action->Maximise/Restore
This is one of a number of posts detailing how to install Ubuntu 6.10 (codename Edgy) on a Thinkpad X41.
This post explains how to install some programming tools on Ubuntu. Since I am a Java developer these days, and also participate in open source projects, I’ll be showing you how to install the Java runtime, the Eclipse IDE and Subversion for working with remote repositories. I also describe installing a tool for uploading to the Flickr photo sharing site, jEdit, my text editor of choice, and WLAssistant, a utility for working with Wireless networks.
Eclipse
To install Sun Java 5.0 and Eclipse 3.2:
Click Application->Add/Remove & search for “Java”
Check the “Sun Java 5.0 Plugin”, “Sun Java 5.0 Runtime” and “Eclipse” plug-ins.
Click “OK”.
If the download fails, try going to System->Administration->Software Sources and changing the Server, and repeat steps 1 to 3.
Subversion
Subversion is a source control program used by many open source projects.It does not come as standard with Ubuntu Edgy, which is strange enough, but it also seems to have disappeared from most of the software repositories, which is even stranger.To install it:
Open a Terminal by clicking Applications->Accessories->Terminal
Type sudo apt-get install subversion
If this doesn’t work, it means that subversion is not in your selected software repository, and you need to change the list of software sources.
To be able to extract RAR archives,open a terminal and type sudo apt-get install rar unrar
Wireless Assistant
Wireless networking support in Ubuntu Edgy is pretty terrible – essentially, there is no wireless network browser to show you what wireless networks are available provided by default. However, there is a utility, called “wlassistant”, that you can install that provides similar functionality to the wireless connection tool in Windows.
Open a Terminal by clicking Applications->Accessories->Terminal
Type sudo apt-get install wlassistant
To run it, type sudo wlassistant. You can also run it by clicking Applications->Internet->Wireless Assistant, but the application requires root permission to run, which you don’t get unless you launch it from the command line.
To run Wireless Assistant from the menu with super-user permissions, click System->Preferences->Menu Layout.
In the left menu, choose the Internet button.
Right click on the Wireless Assistant button in the right menu and choose Properties.
Change the execution command from wlassistant to sudo wlassistant. That should do it! You’ll be prompted for the super-user password when executing it from the menu from now on.
Synergy
To install Synergy, a useful program for sharing a mouse and keyboard among multiple computers:
This is one of a number of posts detailing how to install Ubuntu 6.10 (codename Edgy) on a Thinkpad X41.
The Thinkpad X41 Tablet has some very cool features that unfortunately Ubuntu Edgy doesn’t support out of the box. This post details how to get them working.
Next check if /dev/wacom exists using ls -al /dev | grep wacom
If it does exist:
type sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Check the file to see if InputDevice elements exist with the Identifiersstylus, eraser andcursor. If not, then add the following text to the bottom of the file. Note that pasting this text or editing it directly in gEdit may introduce invalid characters into your xorg.conf file, causing Ubuntu to fail on startup. So you’re better off typing in the text (I know, there’s a lot of it).
If the stylus still does not work after suspending (even after applying the fix above) try replacing all the “/dev/wacom“’s in your xorg to “/dev/ttyS0“, and restart Ubuntu.
To get the trackpoint scrolling working, type:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Find the “Input Device” section whose “Identifier” is “Configured Mouse”, and add the following two lines to the section: Option “EmulateWheel” “true” Option “EmulateWheelButton” “2″
To get the auto-rotate of the screen working, where the screen switches to portrait mode when in tablet mode, do the following (this is copied more or less directly from here):
Open a terminal and type acpi_listen. This should give the following result:
The previous steps define what to do when the laptop screen being closed or opened fires a particular event. Now we must register these scripts to be fired when that event is triggered. Copy the following two files to /etc/acpi/events.
This is one of a number of posts detailing how to install Ubuntu 6.10 (codename Edgy) on a Thinkpad X41. This post focuses on installing multimedia components.
Out of the box, Ubuntu Edgy has problems playing MP3s and some video codecs, due to the fact that it cannot ship non-open sourced software, while most codecs are free, they are not open source. For this reason, you have to download them yourself.
To get MP3s to play:
Click Applications->Add/Remove, choose to show “All Available Applications“and search for GStreamer
Check the “GStreamer extra plugins” box and click “Apply“
Check the “Software restricted by copyright or legal issues” box.
Click OK. If downloading fails, change the server to “Main Server” and try again.
Open a Terminal by clicking Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gxine libxine-main1libxine-extracodecs ogle ogle-gui
When asked if you want to continue, type “Y” and hit Enter.
Firefox should prompt you to open with the package installer, but if not, double click on the downloaded file and install it.
To make RealPlayer work inside Firefox you have to delete the Totem plugins that tell Firefox to play RealMedia files with the open source program Totem. Source Link. Type: cd /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/
sudo rm libtotem-complex-plugin.*
Burn this CD image to a blank CD with the CD burning software of your choice. I used Nero.
Create backup disks for Windows XP, in case something goes horribly wrong and you need to reinstall Windows. The Thinkpad X41 usually doesn’t come shipped with Windows XP on a disc (or at least mine didn’t), so you’ll need these disks if you ever want to reinstall Windows. To do this, click Start/.. tbc
Connect your CD/DVD drive to your laptop, and place the Ubuntu CD in it. Restart your laptop and boot from the CD. If your system is not set to boot from CD (i.e. it always uses the hard drive), then when the laptop is starting to boot, hit the blue “Access IBM” button, and change the boot options to boot from CD before hard drive.
Ubuntu should now load. You will see an icon labelled “Install” on the desktop. Double click on this, and click your way through the install wizard. The defaults are generally the right choice. The installations should take around twenty minutes, without a progress bar – don’t worry, it hasn’t hung, it’s working just fine.
Restart the laptop, removing the CD from the drive.
Since you’ve installed Ubuntu as a dual-boot partition alongside Windows, you will probably want to be able to access your Windows hard drive. The help document provided by Ubuntu at “Partitions and Booting/Make Windows Partitions available from Ubuntu” is out of date – there is no System->Administrators->Disks menu item, as it claims. Instead, open the Help system with System->Help->System Documentation, and click on “Working with your Desktop“. From the left menu, choose “Partitions and Booting/Make Windows Partitions automatically available“.By default, Ubuntu (as with pretty much all Linux distros) provides read-only access to NTFS partitions. To get read-write access, you have to install an extra package called ntfs-3g
You now have to find out the name of your Windows hard drive. type:
cd /dev/disk/by-label ls
This will list the disks available to you. See if you can recognise the name of your C drive in Windows – originally mine was called IBM_PRELOAD. Take note of it
At the end of the fstab file we opened earlier append /dev/disks/by-label/IBM_PRELOAD /media/windows ntfs-3g locale=en_US.utf8 0 0
Save and close the file, and type “sudo mount -a“so the changes take effect. If you still can’t access the windows partition at /media/windows then restart Ubuntu to force the changes to take effect.
On a personal side note, to speed up access to the drive, I created a soft link to it, called “C”, from my home folder. To this open a terminal and type ln -s /media/windows ~/C
If you find your internet connection is slow, then it could be due to the IPv6 protocol interfering with you network requests. To fix this (source link):
Open a terminal and type sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
Locate “alias net-pf-10 ipv6″ and replace it with
#alias net-pf-10 ipv6 alias net-pf-10 off ipv6 alias net-pf-10 off
Save the file and exit gedit.
Open Firefox and type into the address bar about:config.
Find and set the following values in the list:
Set network.dns.disableIPv6 to “true” by double clicking on it
Set network.http.pipelining to “true”
Set network.http.pipeining.maxrequests to 8
Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to “true”
Reboot your system.
To share folders over a Windows network (through Samba) network, a couple of steps are required [source link]:
Click System->Administration->Shared Folders
Click Add and choose the folder you want to share.
Next you must add a password for whatever users you want to be able to connect to your machine over the network. Open a terminal and type sudo smbpasswd -a myusername where ‘myusername’ is, of course, your user name.
You will be prompted for a password twice. Enter it, and you will then be able to connect to that share over a windows network.
This is the first in a series of of posts detailing what is required in order to install the Linux distribution Ubuntu 6.10 (codename Edgy) on a Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC on a separate partition to Windows XP Tablet Edition. It is entirely based on my experiences, and I don’t claim it to be either an official nor all-encompassing list of required actions, merely what I had to do to get what I personally wanted on my laptop.
All of the information contained in this series of posts is available elsewhere on the web, but it is fractured into sepearate wiki posts, blog posts, discussion forums and official documentation. With these other sources, many different options are often covered, e.g. Gnome & KDE, i386 and 64 bit architectures – my posts are just concerned with the Gnome edition of Ubuntu Edgy on i386, specifically as it applies the the Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad X41.
As such, these articles will cover both generic issues, such as getting MP3s working, and also issues specific to the X41, e.g. getting the screen to rotate when in tablet mode and getting the tablet pen to work. Also, for the eye-candy junkies, I also install the Beryl window manager, which looks so damn pretty that Vista should be ashamed of itself.
Yesterday I got the notion that it would be a good idea to practice what I preach (woohoo for open source and boohoo for M$ Windows) and install Ubuntu Edgy (release 6.10) on my Thinkpad X41 tablet PC. While all the usual reasons for this decision apply (Linux = more stable, faster, not evil etc), I must confess to being extremely superficial and drooling over the Beryl desktop, which is simply the sexiest user interface I’ve ever seen.
I’ve avoided this for a long time because the Windows XP Tablet Edition that comes with the laptop is actually quite cool, with lots nifty little tools for use with the tablets pen. However, I find that I rarely use the pen for anything overly complex (an artist I most certainly am not), and I generally use it for browsing the web and reading books. After some long put-off research (I used to tell myself I could always procrastinate tomorrow), I found that a driver does in fact exist for the tablet pen on Ubuntu, and with that my last excuse (barring laziness) was used up.
So, last night I started the process, creating the recovery disks for Windows XP, downloading and burning Ubuntu. Then Jack Bauer got in the way, and much of the rest of the night was taken up with the compulsory viewing of episodes of 24. It seems not even the mightly Ubuntu is a match for Jack’s interrogation techniques (tonight he was about to kill his own brother after torturing him, what chance do an army of open source nerds have?), so I have indeed once again procrastinated.
However, I intend to document the entire process of installing Ubuntu 6.10 on the Lenovo Thinkpad X41 in a future post, as I could not find one anywhere else. Should be fun!
Until I do get around to writing it however, here is a nice generic guide to installing Ubuntu and getting the eye candy working on it.
Update: I did get around to documenting the Ubunty Edgy install process, you can find the first post here.
Ajaxian has posted an article about the Plain Old Webserver (POW), a web server that runs from inside Firefox. This is a strange idea at first look, but after trying it out it seems to work quite well.
The most applicable use that jumps out at me is for prototyping Ajax applications from your local file system without having to install Apache (or another web server). So, just click on a single link, restart Firefox, and you have a web server running on your system. You then drop files into it’s folder inside your user ( or ~ ) home folder, and they’re available for browsing in any web browser on your system, not just Firefox. You can also make the files available to other machines.
From an Ajax developers perspective, the main advantage to this over working directly from the file system is that you are testing in a more realistic envrionment, with the same security measures being applied as will be used when your application goes live. For example, IE7 will not let you do XHR requests if you are running from the local file system. Also, you don’t have to go to the trouble (ok so it’s not THAT much trouble) of installing Apache.
One issue I found with the server was when attempting to enable debugging on Dojo using the Firebug console, using the dojo.require(“dojo.debug.console”) command. It froze the browser, and I had to kill it. However, all other remote XHR requests worked just perfectly.
All in all, this is a very cool concept, and I can definitely see myself using for quick prototyping of Ajax applications. Well done David Kellog!
