Linpus is pretty restrictive, I opened Nautilus by clicking “Documents” on the home screen, then a terminal using “File->Terminal”. Running nm-applet from the command line reveals a segfault. Running “sudo nm-applet” doesn’t cause a segfault and allows a connection, obviously lacking access to the keyring. Once connected to a network, running the update application shows a new version of nm-applet available. I ran the updates, rebooted and the issue is solved. It must have been broken in the last set of updates, ran before the user lost nm-applet. I wasn’t near a wired connection, which would probably be picked up and also allow an update.

Hope this helps someone. It does illustrate the downside of obfuscation – in this case the user has no feedback as to why there is no network connection.

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As installations go, it was relatively painless – certainly better than reinstalling Windows. Don’t get me wrong, Dell is better than most in this respect as they gave us OEM install discs for Windows Vista, bundled software and the drivers.  As strait forward as this is with Dell’s resource CD (it mostly tells you what you need), it doesn’t know any more than what model you own. This is problematic with the wireless card for example as there are two revision states and the drivers are incompatible with each other – one crashes Windows.

Ubuntu 10.04 runs fine with one exception, its Broadcom wireless card – I found that enabling the restricted driver on installation caused a crash and that I had to remove linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-* before I could re-enable it on the installed system. I must confess, I didn’t bother to snag a bug report as it was probably me being impatient and trying to do too much at once.

Lisa knows her way around the Gnome desktop, we have used it on several machines and several distributions (she used to prefer KDE in it’s 1.x incarnations). Predominantly, this laptop is used online – we use Firefox on Windows so there’s no issues there.

The next day I realised I had made the cardinal error of switching someone to OSS – I hadn’t really considered her needs. I forgot about that shiny new piece of Apple hardware that she carries everywhere – an iPhone. I don’t have an iPhone and have never really taken more than a passing interest in the latest Apple hardware so I had no idea that you needed to use iTunes to do everything – including syncing. I checked the net and found that the general consensus was not to bother with it in Linux. I saw several howtos , all discussing changing iPhone firmware. With a year left on the contract, the thought of my wife’s reaction, Apple’s somewhat draconian lock-in and the potential to brick her phone I preferred not to take that course.

Even if I did, I think she might be reluctant to use it. Apple seem to achieved marketing zenith – when people refer to a brand name rather than what it is (Playstation, iPod, Coke, etc.), perhaps not with iPhone but certainly iTunes. Lisa is not the only person I have heard mention iTunes – so I had a good look over it. I see the positives – I organises music, applications, videos and applications well, structuring them on the device and the laptop; there is only one way to do everything, so it’s simple and memorable; purchasing is easy (I suppose it was bound to be) and seems trustworthy. It’s good old encapsulation – the mechanics of syncing, purchasing, organising, backing up, charging and updating are obscured and centralised. There are negatives but I have to say they’re not obvious to the average user – I don’t care for the way it overrides other software for example but in truth most Windows software does that too.

As I said earlier, Lisa is familiar with Ubuntu’s desktop and applications. She knows that it is maintained mostly by volunteers (better than most – she’s seen me doing it for many years). She even acknowledges advantages – faster booting, better stability and security – in particular viruses, which seem to be on every geek stick she receives (cloud computing hasn’t caught on amongst the charity she works with). She is annoyed that Apple haven’t made iTunes available for Ubuntu too but it doesn’t change anything. As we speed evermore to living online, the platform supporting those applications becomes less relevant. While this means we can happily forgo Window’s failings, it unfortunately works both ways – if the hardware we use doesn’t work with our chosen platform then we can switch.

If there’s anything I can take away from this its that Linux is a tool, one which I might be blinded to it’s negatives because of my involvement. Sometimes it isn’t the best solution for everyone so recommending it when its not appropriate might be detrimental. In this case, she thinks Apple are to blame but she could have assumed it was our fault as a distribution. If someone has never tried Ubuntu, then the worst the can really say when someone asks is that they don’t know – if their only experience is negative then there is a risk their assessment will follow suit. Perhaps, in some circumstances the best advocacy is not to advocate.

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So I stuck the battery in after it was booted and it charges… I’m at a loss to explain this. I’d have thought charging was carried out at hardware level.

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I find these objectionable though – they appear to be WordPress and I guess are using a plugin to pull feeds in and publish as articles. They’re not as bad as flat out plagiarism – which I’ve experienced. Mind you even that isn’t the worst, I once wrote a howto which was CC licensed and I realised it had been ripped off when someone posted a comment on it suggesting (quite strongly) that I had taken it from the thief!

So it occurs to me that maybe this is a WordPress thing. Then again maybe not. Like so many of us I get stuck in my ways and WordPress is like a pair of comfy shoes. Maybe I should try a new platform, so I wondered what was popular out there in Ubuntu-land.

I’ve tried Drupal (I don’t like it, sorry Emma), Serendipity and Pixie (I quite liked that but baulked at the theming system). Mind you I also have quite a lot of time to myself over the next four months, maybe I should roll my own, I’ve hacked around in PHP but have never developed a large project using it.

So let me know, suggestions on a postcard. Maybe just a comment here will suffice.

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• Very good battery life
• No solid state disk (SSD) – they’re too small and were a bottleneck on the Aspire One
• Under £300
• Must have a microphone, web-cam and reasonable speakers – Skype is an essential

Restricted to what PC World stocks, it came down to three choices – Acer 531, Samsung NC10 or Toshiba NB200. The NB200 dropped of their stock list sometime between Christmas and New Year and they only had the NC10 in stock when I got to the store so I guess that narrowed it down.

It’s a Windows XP home system although Windows 7 Starter is available if you pay more. With 1 Gb of RAM, Intel Atom processor and 160 Gb hard disk, it has a  1.3 mega pixel web-cam and a comfortable keyboard and touch pad, the latter resplendent with buttons beneath the pad. They quote a nine hour battery life and all for £249.99 (although, with discount this was a ridiculous £212.49).

Battery life is excellent. I couldn’t expect more. There are three modes of operation, cycled through with a Fn+F8 key combination – silent, normal and speed. I’m in normal now and have been since I started typing this post, the fully charged battery is now showing 8:28 remaining. This is fairly stable too, and the system is perfectly responsive for writing, surfing and so on. Without doing tests, this is subjective but I had the system on normal earlier with my Blackberry, MP3 player and and external Western Digital hard disk connected to USB and got four and a half hours from the system. It’s a relief to see that Samsung didn’t opt to use a shiny screen – these drive me crazy, especially when the back-light is low. I’ve a lamp behind me at the moment and there’s no bright reflection.

Generally, I find Windows systems come with so much cruft preinstalled that a clean install is needed. I also tend to lean towards Dell hardware as they provide installation disks rather than restore disks and I’m glad to say I can add Samsung to this list. The restore disk is slip-streamed Windows XP Home SP3, although it’s a shame that there isn’t a utility provided to push this on to a USB disk.

Preinstalled software consists of Samsung’s software and a trial McAfee license. I removed the preinstalled McAfee as I have a licenced copy through my ISP. Samsung software is OK, focusing on improving XP’s failings – such as managing display, audio and WiFi, managing backup and updating drivers.

Anyway, how does it fair with Ubuntu?

I used an Ubuntu 9.10 live USB session to see what was working. I was pleased to discover that it appears to be everything. Wireless, bluetooth, correct resolution, touch pad and keyboard. Battery life is not noticeably different to Windows either. The only minor criticism is that although the screen is rotated, the mouse is not but I’m sure that’s something that can be addressed with some poking around.

It is refreshing to see hardware working out of the box and is becoming common. This might be down to Samsung’s choice of hardware but probably not as their website mentions only Windows 7. Checking the community documentation, it would appear that some configuration was needed with 8.10 but there is nothing entered for 9.10. So I think its not an unrealistic conclusion to say that work done on the kernel in the last year is responsible. The ath5k kernel module has been significantly improved since kernel 2.6.27 – this is the same chip set that the Aspire One A110 had.

I’m relieved to see such improvement in such a relatively short space of time. We can have all the bells and whistles but its the out of box experience that most new users will judge us on, right or wrong. I know it’s unfair that a clean Windows install supports far less hardware but many of our users are unaware that they have a restore CD. With Vista being a farce and Windows 7 starter being an uncertainty, I hope we have a chance to let Ubuntu shine through on these devices.

As an aside I had a curious conversation with someone about Windows. He suggested that Windows 7 was unnecessary on a netbook, as XP was less resource hungry and you only need video playback, VOIP, web browser and word processor. Logical enough I suppose, however I suggested that the same was true of Ubuntu, only to be told that it’s too different and that it doesn’t run games (despite this not being a requirement). Maybe we can’t win but for those who venture in, if everything works then its one less thing for naysayers to argue.

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I don’t advocate copyright infringement but I do fair use.  I am regularly away from home and take a hard drive with me on which I want to have copies of DVD, rather than carry around lots of DVD.  I would have thought that a fairly simple interface was required for this.

Fortunately, Lifehacker pointed the right direction with bitRipper.

bitRipper's main interface

See, there’s nothing too complicated here – pick the track (which granted can be an art form on some DVD), choose output and start ripping.  Of course, the options are there and it uses any available codecs.

Ripping

See now that’s better.  I have used Handbrake but with mixed results and it seems top easy to click the wrong box and after sitting for an hour find that the file is, for example, soundless.  VLC can stream output which does work but tends to lose the first few seconds in a garbled mess.  Both of these have the advantage of being cross platform however.  So if you know of a Linux alternative then feel free to let me know about it.

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Installation is painless, launching from a desktop icon and going through the same steps as Ubuntu.  I like the inclusion of encrypted filesystem support, enabled by ticking the box during the partitioning stage.  This is more important in the environment I work in than it might seem.  There have been a number of high profile cases of hard disks and laptops being lost within the MoD and it has taken steps to reduce this.  All our laptops now use Flagstone and we have had copies of PGP Desktop Encryption bought for us (it’s being distributed through Forces Gateway) for personal laptops.  When people look to me to assist them with a Linux install, encryption is always requested.

Speaking of Flagstone, it has a horrible interface.  Fedora’s looks nice as does the boot process in general.  The Fedora logo fills from white as the sequence completes.  While clever, it’s not as clear as a progress bar – I thought it was hung on initial boot.

Encrypted disk password entry

Once installed (which doesn’t take long), we’re presented with a first run configuration.  After a brief introduction to the license, we’re prompted to create the first user (Fedora uses a root account).  This would benefit from Ubiquity’s approach, where username is created from name.  Finally we set the time and are asked to submit our hardware profile.

The GDM login screen is welcoming enough, Redhat has put some effort into fingerprint scanning – so that appears too.  I haven’t a fingerprint scanner to test this with and the HP laptops we use at work running RHEL don’t have them enabled.

For users of systems other than Ubuntu, the Free Desktop login sound will be familiar.  As a fan of the Blubuntu theme, I also like the appearance.  The Gnome desktop is instantly familiar, with the network manager applet, desktop places and icons all where you expect.  Menus are sensibly laid out, the only caveats for those familiar with Ubuntu are that the terminal is in Applications->System Tools and that the shutdown and logout buttons are under System (as Ubuntu’s used to be).  There are also additional applications to configure a firewall, how users authenticate and to configure SELinux.

Fedora desktop

At this point, I might mention I’m using Virtual Box under Windows Vista (I keep the Ubuntu system clean on another machine).  Installing VBox Additions brings my first brush with package management in Fedora since FC4.  It has improved greatly, yum resolves dependencies well and works well from the command line with a similar syntax to apt-get.  Where it falls down is speed – everything seems to be checked before downloading then again before installing.  Strangely, Presto is available but not enabled by default.  Presto downloads delta RPMs – so only the part of the package which has changed is downloaded and upgraded.  This makes fo a significant reduction in downloads and hence faster updates.  I ran two updates, both averaging at a 73% reduction in size.

It also lacks some of Ubuntu’s better thought out groups and packages, build-essential for instance is obtained (for the most part) by “yum install make automake gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel”.  It’s also worth noting that it also installed for a version of the kernel it hadn’t updated – preventing the installation of VBox Additions.

Fedora’s licensing policy is also rather restrictive, much more than Ubuntu’s.  I don’t disagree with this policy but it’s not immediately obvious how to obtain software such as VLC nor the rationale behind why it isn’t available.  However it doesn’t take long to find repositories such as RPM Fusion but I can imagine this being a stumbling block for many Ubuntu users who already frequently complain about software installation.

That said, Fedora’s update interface is excellent.  Icons are used to show the state of each update – downloading, installing, cleaning up and so forth as well as identifying updates as enhancements, security or bug fixes.  Coupled with a large description of the fix, notifications are clear – offering full or only security updates.  This is a nice touch, especially when you’re on a mobile broadband connection away from home.  PackageKit has the ability to automatically download codecs, as with Ubuntu.  However its a welcome addition to see that this now extends to the automatic addition of new fonts.

Clear update information

As mentioned earlier, Fedora has a root account enabled.  Ubuntu, users are used to using sudo, which is available and the alterations required to make it work are simple.

Pulseaudio is implemented, which seems to have had a mixed reception in Ubuntu.  I haven’t noticed any issues with this in Fedora and it seems well integrated.  I like Pulseaudio and think improved audio control is much needed for Linux to gain mainstream desktop acceptance.

The default filesystem is Ext4, which seems stable although I’m not running exhaustive tests on it.  In any event that’s in Karmic too I believe.

Fedora implements SELinux.  Dan Walsh has a much better explanation of this than I can give, available as a PDF.  Ubuntu uses AppArmor, although as Jef Spaleta pointed out from OpenWeek (it’s the third comment), this might be replaced by SELinux.  From a user’s point of view, this is more or less transparent.  There are two tools provided, one to configure profiles and one to troubleshoot.  Both work well, though I can’t see the configure tool being ventured into by most users.

Hardware recognition was mostly flawless, in much the same vein as Ubuntu.  The only device that it had issues with was a Freecom DVB-T USB card.  Fedora refused the firmware, no matter that it works in Ubuntu and Arch, it just keeps asking for it – even though it’s there.  Of particular note is that when I installed it on an Acer Aspire One it is the only major distribution I’ve tried it on to work out of the box without tweaking, in fact the only thing I noticed was the WiFi lights are missing but that’s fixed in recent kernels.  With easy encryption, this makes Fedora a potential winner in the net book market.

I’m impressed by Fedora.  It’s familiar and friendly, with a well defined and complete appearance.  Delta RPMs are a great idea – especially as we consider that not everyone has a fast internet connection (Sony wants to take this on board, as I wait here for another massive system update on PS3).  Encryption is very welcome as is SELinux.  On the downside, the installation licensing limits the distributed applications and yum is still comparitively slow.

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Huawei E1550

Update: You no longer need to install udev-extras in Ubuntu 10.04.

I picked up a Huawei E1550 pre-pay mobile broadband dongle, £39.99 with 3 Mobile including 3Gb usage (note it’s not the device they’re picturing).

I’m on a course next month so that’ll do fine, I have no reception at home and am not away enough to warrant a contract.

It appears to identify itself as USB storage, to install drivers on Windows then flip-flops to a modem.  Nice idea, terrible implementation, even in Windows where it installs drivers every time you use a different USB port (it’s often wise to try such devices in Windows – so you don’t chase your tail with a faulty device).  Pretty sure it’s the autorun program that’s flipping the device.

Anyway for 8.10 you need udev-extras, you don’t need this for 10.04 onwards:
sudo apt-get install udev-extras

Add a udev rule:
gksu gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/15-huawei-e1550.rules

What we’re doing is telling udev that when this device is plugged in to switch its mode.  Paste this and save:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb",
SYSFS{idProduct}=="1446",
SYSFS{idVendor}=="12d1",
RUN+="/lib/udev/modem-modeswitch --vendor 0x12d1 --product 0x1446 --type option-zerocd"

On next insertion, Network Manager’s mobile broadband configuration assistant will run – select “3 (handsets)”.

Also, the booklet that came with mine was fairly unhelpful but flashing green lights are powered, flashing blue show available networks and solid blue is connected to a network.

The differences with both Fedora and Arch are on my wiki pages.

Please don’t ask if it works in Linpus Linux Lite because I haven’t had that installed in ages.  I suspect the Fedora guide will point the way but I know Acer have their own mobile broadband software for Huawei devices.  Whether that extends to this model I couldn’t say.

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http://wiki.lynxworks.eu/aspireone/arch

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I was surprised, especially on Ubuntu, how easy it was to setup.

My netbook runs Arch, so I installed it on that and my Dell 1545 running Ubuntu 9.04.

Hardware

In Ubuntu the firmware was added to linux-restricted-modules 2.6.24, so it’s picked up straight away.  Under Arch the firmware is missing but there’s a copy here which needs to be put in /lib/firmware before plugging in.  Once plugged in checking dmesg shows the device is recognised, don’t worry about the error message:

dvb-usb: found a 'WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (based on ZL353)' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will use the device's hardware PID filter (table count: 15).
DVB: registering new adapter (WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (based on ZL353))
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (WideView USB DVB-T)...
input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/input/input11
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 300 msecs.
dvb-usb: WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (based on ZL353) successfully initialized and connected.
dvb-usb: recv bulk message failed: -110

Notice that the IR receiver is also initialised, more on that later.

Software

I’m using VLC but need a couple of other utilities too:

sudo apt-get install dvb-apps dvb-utils vlc for Ubuntu.

sudo pacman -S linuxtv-dvb-apps vlc for Arch.

Now scan for channels.  You need to know your transmitter, which you can find out from Ofcom (in the UK) and replace “Sudbury” with it:

scan /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/uk-Sudbury -o zap|tee /home/dougie/channel-list.conf

Opening this file in VLC will now give you TV playback:

vlc /home/$USER/channel-list.conf

Create a launcher and you’re done.  Well unless you want to use the remote of course.

Remote

It’s relatively straight forward in Ubuntu, install lirc:

sudo apt-get install lirc

When the menu appears, choose Freecom DVB-T USB Stick and click OK.  Next select None and click OK.  Lastly choose /dev/input/by-path/pci-2-3-event-ir and click OK.

I had to transpose the VOL_DOWN / CH_DOWN and VOL_UP / CH_UP in /usr/share/lirc/remotes/freecom/lircd.conf.freeconf, your mileage may vary as there appears to be two remote layouts.

Now if you run irw in a terminal and press the buttons on the remote, you should see output like:

0000000080010071 00 MUTE Freecom_DVB-T_USB


Now we’re nearly there, just need to tell applications (in this case VLC) what to do.  This is done by editing ~/.lircrc.

Configuration is not particularly well documented but centres around ~/.lircrc.  Each button has a configuration block, starting with begin and ending with end.  You need to stipulate the program to receive (in our case VLC), the button (which we know from irw) and what it does in the receiving program.  For example, assigning the volume up button to increase the volume in VLC.

begin
prog = vlc
button = VOL_UP
config = key-vol-up
repeat = 1
end


Open VLC and click Tools -> Preferences, then under “Show settings” click “Advanced”.  Under “Interfaces/Control Interfaces” tick “Infrared remote control interface”.  Click “Save” to close.

VLC Infrared Option

Sadly, I couldn’t get it to work on Arch.  The remote is recognised without lirc, detecting some of the keypresses – power, mute, volume and the numbers but checking sendkey and xev shows there is no keycode generated.

With lirc, irw doesn’t see input and yet the /etc/input/event does.  I’m reasonably sure that a module is overriding lirc and tried removing the obvious but to no avail.

After spending the better part of a day farting about with it, I realise that on a small screen the chances of me needing a remote negate the effort.  Bugs me that I haven’t got it though, so I guess I’ll revist it when I’ve more time.

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