Computer Bob's Attic
DEBIAN 40r0 UBUNTU Fedora Core 7 SuSE 10.3 SuSE 10.2 SuSE 10.1 SuSE 10.0 SuSE 9.2 Deskside Laptop GRAMPS Fedora Core 6

UBUNTU 9.10 released, 30 Oct - 12 Nov 2009

As an aside, I tried installing Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) beta 64 bit version on the Fujitsu Notebook. Several key applications either did not install (OpenOffice 1.1.5) or did not run (Adobe Reader, RealPlayer). End of 64 Bit experiment.

GENERALLY 9.10 IS ASOCIAL, UNFIT FOR HUMANS!

Generally the ability of remote machines to open windows on a 9.10 machine is crippled. This renders remote operation of gvim, VMware, and Xdos, for example, impossible. Also there is no obvious way to access XDMCP logins in either direction, though a google search will retrieve many attempts to solve these problems.

gvim produces gtk error messages which can be supressed by starting gvim (or gview) with an alias which streams errors to /dev/null.

VMware requires at least version 7.0.0, and thus pay up for a new license, to install on 9.10. Unfortunately on the WinBook 7.0.0 will not start after installing, presenting an error message: NB: "PAE" is Physical Address Extensions.

"Your processor does not support PAE which is required by VMware workstation. Cannot continue. "

OpenOffice appears to be OK on the 32 bit version of 9.10.

UBUNTU 9.04 release: 23 - 30 Apr 2009, 28 - 29 May 2009, 23 Jun 2009

First the good news

• WinBook Screen Driver
  This works! Unlike 8.10, Ubuntu installs drivers which correctly handle this laptop's screen from the beginning, no tricks needed!
• Epson Artisan 800 Printer Driver
  9.04 offers a correct driver for this printer instead of guessing an older Epson driver which might work. Even better, this driver produces better color rendition than even the TurboPrint driver.

Now the rest of the news

Epson 4490 scanner, and possibly other models, needs drivers from www.avasys.jp which was not responding in April 2009, but was back to normal in October 2009. See my UBUNTU file for details.

9.04 looks a LOT better 29 May 2009 than it did 30 Apr 2009!

WARNING!! DO NOT REMOVE PACKAGE "network-manager". DOING SO WILL REMOVE THE COMPONENTS WHICH OPERATE YOUR NETWORKS, COMPLETELY ISOLATING YOUR MACHINE FROM THE NETWORK AND ANY FURTHER USE OF SYNAPTIC, I.E. SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE OR UNDOING THIS ERROR!!

WARNING!! DO NOT INSTALL "kwin". DOING SO WILL REMOVE THE GNOME COMPONENTS WHICH OPERATE YOUR NETWORKS, COMPLETELY ISOLATING YOUR MACHINE FROM THE NETWORK AND ANY FURTHER USE OF SYNAPTIC, I.E. SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE!!

"WiFi Radar" looks like it will do the job but I have yet to test it with an accessible WiFi connection.

• KDE Desktop Background
  Different background images for each desktop are not implemented, they must all be the same. This new misbehavior appears to be adopted from gnome. Switching among desktops can be done only via the "map" in the bottom panel, no more mousewheel.
• KDE Desktop Launcher Icons Presentation, Part 1
  On 28 May 2009, while trying another fresh installation, discovered that in KDE Desktop the following steps restore all the former Desktop Launcher Icons:
  1. Right-click on the desktop background.
  2. From the pop-up menu select "Appearance Settings"
  3. On the resulting pop-up panel select "Desktop Activity -> Type" menu.
  4. From this menu select "Folder View".
  5. Finally click "OK" in the lower right corner of this panel.
  6. Launcher Icons will reappear in a few seconds.
  7. In the "Properties -> Application" tab of each Launcher Icon insert "$HOME" in the "Work path:".
  As suspected below the default PATH attached to Launcher Icons had changed.
• KDE Desktop Launcher Icons Presentation, Part 2
  Initially the former Icon set appeared in a scrolling sub-panel on the desktop. I never found a way to adjust the size of this "panel", but while trying to the panel disappeared.
  Somehow I coerced the old icon set to reappear on the desktop much as with KDE3 / Ubuntu 8.04.
  Mysteriously this set of icons also disappeared. All the files were still present and intact in the Desktop directory. The icon set re-appeared after reverting the system to 8.04, so whatever went wrong is in 9.04.
• KDE Desktop Launcher Icon Commands
  Most of the launchers failed. The apparent cause is the "Work path" entry. Before 9.04 this appeared to default to "$home", in 9.04 it appears to default to "Desktop". Inserting "$home" got them working again until they disappeared.
• KDE Menu
  This is now a multi-level navigation which I haven't seen since abandoning SuSE years ago! Each menu is shorter than with KDE3, but navigation is harder because you now have to navigate 1 - 2 more layers. The "old" system can be selected, but it lacks the convenience of remembering the (5) most frequent choices. This lack makes launcher icons more valuable, if only they wouldn't disappear! In the May 2009 reload the "old" style menu could be selected.
• Gnome U.I.
  Desktop switching works from mouse wheel. Most of the KDE Launcher Icons appeared. "$HOME" had to be removed from all, then ones not already marked executable had to be so marked. Gnome does not edit all of the KDE properties of these icons, e.g. "$HOME" had to be removed with gvim. Some Launcher Icons, for example the one with the command: remind -q -a -r | xmessage -file - -nearmouse, don't work at all and have no error indication, yet this works OK at a command line. On balance Gnome looks preferable to the new KDE, but I liked the old KDE a lot better!
• Printing to Brother HL-5250
  Once again somewhat puzzling results: on initial testing 29 May 2009 none of the HL-5250 drivers delivered output within 60 seconds. From the Fujitsu computer, by comparison, the test double sided printout took 15 seconds from click to completed using the HL-5170 driver. The WinBook ultimately came in at 24 seconds with the HL-5170 driver. During testing one or more of the "slow" jobs, which had been cancelled by lprm, suddenly appeared on the printer!
  Four drivers are offered for the HL-5250 printer, which range from barely functional down to non-functional. Worst case there was no printout of my test page after 25 minutes, vs. about 37 seconds to complete under 8.04. The ones which would print this test page (from CACM proceedings via AcroRead) required hand feeding paper instead of drawing it from the tray, and this was with the TurboPrint system. A second test case using OpenOffice 1.1.5 resulted in not printing some of the graphic images with the HL-5250 drivers. This case prints correctly using the HL-5170 driver. This file had previously printed perfectly even after carrying it to Kinko's as a .pdf file!
  
  Further testing on the Fujitsu Laptop under Ubuntu 8.04 suggests the problems reported here apply to the Brother BR3 driver as much as to 9.04. An apparent workaround is to not install any of the "brother" packages, then set up the HL-5250 as an HL-5170.
• KsCD
  My favorite CD player now sports a grossly bulbous appearance on the desktop and does not appear to have any menu buttons as before. Another thumbs down!
• qps
  qps (Visual Process Manager) abends every time it is started. Revert to top in a console window.
• adept_updater
  Is no more. It's replacement appears to be update-manager.

I have installed VMware in the Gnome U.I., it appears to run correctly.

UBUNTU 8.10 release: 30 Oct - 2 Nov 2008

WinBook's 1280x768 screen cannot be set to higher resolution than 800x600. The "reign" of 915resolution is over. The former technique of starting with 7.04, installing 915resolution, and upgrading from there fails with 8.10.

Results with the Fujitsu N6470 are better, but strange.

1. Plugging into the headphone jack now cuts off the internal speakers. Formerly this did not.
2. KDE: KDE4 may be a forced replacement of KDE3 (need to investigate). On starting a KDE4 desktop, ALL former KDE3 launcher icons disappeared! No more "K Menu", it's replaced by an awkward menu navigation system last seen in SuSE. Graphics on the desktop appear to take more room than before. Wallpaper can be selected only from system choices, I didn't see a way to use my own images.
3. gnome Desktop: Shifting to this, all the former KDE3 launcher icons appeared! Most needed new image selections, and some needed command line revisions.
   
   Remaining items observed using gnome desktop...
4. gnome allowed me to supply my own desktop (wallpaper) image.
5. ALSA Mixer GUI now has only 2 sliders, which suggests much less capability to manage the audio system.
6. adept: adept_updater and companion notifier have disappeared.
7. tkremind: reminder launcher no longer works, but it's command still functions on a command line. The companion message no longer appears in its own package, need to install gxmessage to get it.
8. Real Player: Formerly with KDE3 an entry for this appeared in the "favorites" section of "K Menu", allowing restarting Real Player with all former "files" retained. In particular it retained a web connection to http://wmnr.org/listen.htm which could be re-activated within Real Player. In KDE4 trying to use this capability abends Real Player. I have to make the connection through a browser every time.
9. Printers Set up the Brother HL-5140 Laser printer OK, though the Foomatic test page was disappointing due to lack of gray-scale graphic and lack of border outlines. /user/bin/foomatic_gui offered only laser printer drivers for the Epson Stylus C88+ ink squirter, and abended with an error message if any of these choices were accepted.
10. Starting gvim and several other programs which produce gui's elicited an error message that protocols were not available (where have I seen that before??), but seemed to then work OK.
11. gftp, rup and rstatd all seemed to work normally.
12. Acrobat Reader: did not appear in packages, but adobe.com has a .deb version.

Bottom line: WinBook cannot use 8.10, and it looks highly undesirable for the Fujitsu.

UBUNTU 8.04 release: 24 - 27 Apr 2008

"Synaptic Package Manager" appears to install by default. On the WinBook laptop when booting from the distribution CD select "F4 Modes", then choose "Safe graphics mode". This will give an 800x600 display on the 1280x768 screen. After installing Ubuntu, use "Synaptic Package Manager" to install "915resolution". This will enable a 1280x768 display.

Unfortunately the following sequence fails 7 Jan 2009: updates to 7.10 appear to no longer be available on the net, though the 7.04 installation and initial update work.

Alternatively I was able to get 8.04 running on the WinBook by starting with a 7.04 boot and install, then upgrading successively to 7.10 and 8.04.

While the sound driver fails in 7.10 it's working again in 8.04 as of 10 July 2008. Possibly one of the updates installed since April 2008 has cured the problem.
(Googling the problem had produced several reports of problems with the Intel sound chip for both 7.10 and 8.04, and several cures, none which worked on WinBook.)

Bottom line: looks like both WinBook and Fujitsu can stay on Ubuntu 8.04.

SuSE 11.0 Beta-2: 8 - 10 May 2008

Based on lack of success trying to migrate the WinBook beyond Ubuntu 7.04 I tried this distribution. The short version is that a direct install once again resulted in no xorg screen display (except booting in safe mode gave an 800x600 screen, no networking, and no conversion to a 1280x768 screen).

Aha! thinks I, lets start over from a clean 10.2 install and install the upgrade from the 11.0 Beta-2 DVD. Oops! This process leaves the pre-existing "/" and "/boot" partitions dangling and disconnected (the installer boots and runs in memory), so it failed.

Try again with a "monolithic" disk layout, no separate "/boot" partition. This sort of works, though failures to update around 20 packages were announced. Ignoring these allowed the update to continue resulting in a working, if uncertain, system with a 1280x768 screen.

OK, lets take a closer look at what's going on. After a bit of digging, the screen control files appear to use a base name of xorg.conf in the directories /etc/X11 and /var/lib/sax. Copy these file sets from the working sequential upgraded system to the clean 11.0 Beta-2 installation. After two attempts to specify the 1280x786 screen using sax2 (through YaST) the desired screen display appeared! Somewhere along the way connection to the speakers disappeared though, and could not be recovered with YaST tools.

The proximate cause of 1280x768 screen display failure appears to be that sax2, or whatever actually generates the xorg.conf files, creates no Modelines for that screen size. In the direct 11.0 Beta-2 installation, of all the xorg.conf* files in /etc/X11 and /var/lib/sax only /var/lib/sax/xorg.conf.first had any lines containing "1280".

A couple of reboots later sound is back! But sax2 starts and does not open. Attempting to start it from a command line results in a suggestion to start as: sax2 -r "if your configuration has changed", so try that. sax2 now starts normally, has monitor and display at 800x600 and display at 1280x768 (WXGA). Change monitor to LCD -> 1280x768@60Hz (which forces display to 1280x768 (WXGA)) and test. Test never recovers to viewable screen, so reboot.

After reboot, sax2 -r starts normally alleging a 800x600 screen and display, apparently its defaults. The screen in which this is displayed is 1280x768, verified by "kruler". Once again changed monitor to LCD -> 1280x768@60Hz but didn't test. Logged out and login splash screen never appeared. Disabled 915resolution line in /etc/init.d/boot.local and rebooted. No xorg display at all. Re-enabled 915resolution line and rebooted. Still no xorg display at all.

Bundled working xorg.conf* files into a tar-ball in the / directory and added a line to /etc/init.d/boot.local to re-install these working files on each boot. This, however crude, works. Sound usually works, but may cut out randomly for no obvious reason. Maybe I'll work on this later...

Next need to test robustness of this approach with another clean install.

Debian 40r3: 6 - 7 Apr 2008

After Ubuntu failed to fully use the WinBook's screen I revisited Debian. This distribution allows 915resolution to correctly handle the screen. New problem: it doesn't operate the sound system on WinBook. Debian also has little support for 3 tools I use: Firefox, Thunderbird, and Java SDK. It substitutes comparable tools with different names and locations, making standardization difficult.

Bottom line: Debian doesn't serve my needs.

UBUNTU 8.04 beta: 2 - 6 Apr 2008

The default package manager NOT "synaptic" is terrible! As soon as possible install "synaptic", which is not installed by default, and use it for all further package management.

8.04 wants to install Firefox 3, which may be OK, but if you were using any extensions they're dead. Reverting to Firefox 2.x is not so easy, since it's now named "firefox-2". You'll need to change any commands which use firefox.

Kubuntu offers a version with KDE4. This works with the WinBook's display if "Safe Mode" is selected. However, I could NOT find a way to get higher screen resolution than 800x600 on a 1280x768 display, so I didn't continue with it. 915resolution detected an incompatible video chip, which is most peculiar since 915resolution works correctly on the WinBook in Ubuntu 7.04.

Kubuntu with KDE3 will not install the Gnome desktop, which has several tools used in setting up the system.

Back to "standard" Ubuntu and try again... Ubuntu can install both Gnome and KDE3, but KDE3 is severely crippled, for instance could not find a way to get screen resolution higher than 1024x768 on the WinBook's 1280x768 screen. Curiously, the Gnome control selection "Applications -> Other -> Screen & Graphics" which appears when running the live CD does not appear in the installed version. This was the ONLY means I found to select 1280x768 on the WinBook. Making this selection produced a virtual screen in which the physical screen could pan, not a satisfactory result. Similarly, in the installed system on the WinBook the selection: "K-Menu -> System Settings, General Tab, Computer Administration" lacks the "Monitor & Display" choice.

On the WinBook the live CD must be started in "Safe" mode to get a working display, which is then 800x600 on a 1280x768 screen. This is a major improvement over 7.10's no screen at all, though there are a few seconds of scrambled screen before the driver settles in. Will 915resolution work it's magic in a full installation? It didn't, as noted above. In the non-KDE4 installations installing 915resolution would prevent the xorg driver from displaying.

CONCLUSION: on the WinBook, Ubuntu 8.04 beta is unusable. Try again with the released version.

On the Fujitsu laptop the live CD correctly detects screen size and installs a driver. Will Audacity work better in the full installation? Yes, it does, though some ALSA libraries need to be loaded to enable connecting Audacity to ALSA Mixer. I need to determine which are actually needed. The "native" xorg driver for ATI Radeon has a much lower CPU load than the proprietary driver needed for Ubuntu 7.10. However, distractions such as moving windows which use a lot of screen update CPU cycles will interrupt audio playback. Haven't tried recording yet. "jackd" was not needed.

SuSE 10.3, Fedora Core 7, UBUNTU, and Debian: Oct 2007

SuSE 10.3 was released in early October 2007. I tried it first on my WinBook W245 laptop, using a spare disk. Everything looked fine until the system rebooted following installation, when the X-display never appeared. Later attempts to start Sax to directly setup the display also failed. Oops! Do I fight this or something else?

In Fedora Core 7 I discovered fairly quickly that the sound drivers for the laptop usually don't work. End of that.

UBUNTU was fairly impressive until time to rlogin from another system. I have not got that working, so on to another. (more to come...)

Debian 40r0 was even more impressive than UBUNTU, it has an immense collection of packages. rlogin works in both directions, and a user rlogged into the Debian machine can start and display X-application windows. However, the Debian machine has not yet allowed X-applications on another machine to open windows on it.

While UBUNTU and Debian appear to effectively protect machines connected directly to the Internet, they are anti-social on machines connected to a local net inside a firewall. The jury is still out on this change!

Back to UBUNTU for another round: significant goals are to get the following working:

• logins from another machine on the net
• X-Displays from another machine on the net
• VMware emulation running Windows 2000 and DOS
• Play DVD movies

All were accomplished! Debian should work as well based on what I learned with UBUNTU. Time now to stop testing and get some use of the UBUNTU system.

VMware News 9 May 2007

VMware 6.0 appeared today at http://www.vmware.com/. It installs same as 5.x, see instructions in: Install notes for VMWARE. Unfortunately the toolbars at the top of VMWare's window are now fixed, costing about 0.5" at the top. This hurts on a laptop!

USB News 3 May 2007

Kernel 2.6.18.8-0.3 restores /proc/bus/usb making USB available to VMware guests. See SuSE 10.2 for details.

Operating Systems

In 1998, while installing SuSE 5.2 on a second machine (a Chembook laptop) I decided I'd better make a record of what I'd learned from installing all these distributions. Since SuSE looked like my distribution of choice for the future, I could make installations quicker and less painful with this collected experience.

Six years and many installations later, I decided to make a better looking, HTML enhanced, and more comprehensive set of notes for SuSE 9.2. With this start, versions for 10.0 and 10.1 followed in turn.
8 Dec 2006 I found 10.2 at opensuse.org. I have installed it and checked most of it against previous experience.

In April 2007 I tested some Linux software destined for inclusion in an upcoming release of the PA-SPAUG resource CD. A report from this testing should be included on the CD. As part of this testing I installed a recent version, Core 6, of Fedora. This is a vastly more useable distribution than the Red Hat one I tried several years ago. Like SuSE, it has it's own set of problems. See my (brief) report on Core 6 included in the above menu.

Be sure to look at this MAJOR resource for Linux help: http://www.howtoforge.com/.

Hardware

Deskside

• Towers
  These are both built around ASUS P4B533 Motherboards. I've found building up machines from good components gets a better and more compatible result than fighting proprietary details. Upgrades work better, too. Both machines have been upgraded over several years to DVD Writer drives, better frame-buffers, and bigger hard disks.
  One of the reasons for installing 10.2 was that it included Audacity, a sound editor. I have wanted to transfer several LP records to CDs for convenience and preservation. The sound system in this Tower works fairly well, though there is no surplus of gain. I discovered that I had to remove the Sound-Blaster card, it provided signal on only one channel.
• DOS Runner
  This has an older motherboard, and was constructed solely to run a DOS emulator. It's a headless server usable from any machine on the local net.

• ASUS Netbook Eee PC 1005HA
  Vintage 2009.
  The small screen on this machine makes it more difficult to use, but that is one of the tradeoffs for getting an otherwise very capable machine which is extremely portable. It can drive a larger external display which eases the transition to desktop use when not traveling.
  • Ubuntu 9.04
    This is the current OS for this machine. Network drivers in this distribution did not work. Replacement drivers are available which require using a more recent kernel than in the 9.04 distribution. Once the kernel and drivers were installed everything appears to work correctly.
  • Hard Disk
    I installed Linux on an external HD instead of opening the machine to replace its internal one. Booting works normally, the only consequence is that the Linux boot block is written to the internal HD thus remains even if the external HD is removed.
  • Battery life
    The manufacturer claims 10 hours. This would be running Windoze with all power saving options in force. I have measured 5.5 hours running Ubuntu 9.04 while driving an external USB HD and playing an audio stream with no power saving applied other than the normal screen blanking. This is quite acceptable!

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• Fujitsu Lifebook N6470
  Vintage 2008.
  • Ubuntu 9.04
    This is the current OS for this machine. everything works except Audio recording as described elsewhere.
  • Ubuntu 7.04
    This would not run the display at all, similar to the problem with 7.10 on the WinBook.
  • Ubuntu 7.10
    This ran the 1440x900 display up to 800x600. See the Ubuntu link (at the top of this page) for how to get 1440x900!
    This machine offers 2 hard disks, a dual-layer DVD drive, a dual core CPU, and a large screen. I was looking for a portable development machine comparable to the deskside one. Be sure to install irqbalance which considerably smooths out mouse dragging operations. A most useful feature: the keystroke Fn-F4 shuts off the infernal (oops, did I mean internal?) mouse pad! You do have to do this every login- maybe there's a programmatic way? This machine has good sounding speakers. Though plugging headphones into the headphone jack does not silence the speakers, AlsaMixerGui can independently mute speakers or headphones, making the machine useable in a public environment. There is also a front panel switch which cuts off WiFi. The only disadvantage for my purposes to the sound system is that the only analog input is the microphone jack.
  • Battery
    Claimed battery life is about 30 minutes. I have measured 45 minutes, at the end of which the computer goes to sleep. On restarting all functions except the VMware networks (vmnetn) appear to recover. VMware emulations start and run in this situation, however. That this much works "out of the box" is impressive! Better yet, after 2 discharge / recharge cycles the battery recovered to 100% of design capacity each time. This is a first, previous laptops have recovered only to about 85%.

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• WinBook W245
  Vintage 2006. Linux on Laptops data
  • SuSE 10.0
    Installation was OK except that the display could not be driven at 1280x768, only 1024x768. This was not acceptable because everything on the screen was stretched horizontally. (But see 10.2 installation notes for a probable solution.)
  • SuSE 10.1
    Everything except the Winmodem worked. Possibly this could be made to work, but it's not worth the trouble since a modem card in the PCMCIA slot is a quick and easy alternative.
    Display could be easily set to 1280x768.
    See the screenshot of the basic machine working and a photo with a DVD playing.
    
  • SuSE 10.2
    Everything except the Winmodem worked. Possibly this could be made to work, but it's not worth the trouble since a modem card in the PCMCIA slot is a quick and easy alternative.
    Sound recording using krecord was distorted enough on the WinBook to be unusable for both 10.1 and 10.2. It works very well on the tower under 10.0.
    As with 10.0 the display could NOT be set to 1280x768. However, this time I found a solution which is documented in 10.2 installation notes. I expect the same solution would apply to 10.0.
    One of the reasons for installing 10.2 was that it included Audacity, a sound editor. I have wanted to transfer several LP records to CDs for convenience and preservation. The sound system in this laptop is NOT up to the task, for example making a piano sound like a harpsichord.
  • SuSE 10.3
    This could not be made to drive the screen, so I went shopping for a different Linux version. Ubuntu was the result, which has been VERY satisfactory! Ubuntu 7.04 worked well on this laptop, but 7.10 a few months later had the same problem as SuSE 10.3. Looks like an X-Org driver change.

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• Acer Aspire 5102WLMi
  This was to be my wife's new laptop. It is a dual core Turion notebook (64 bit CPU). Unfortunately it was incompatible with SuSE Linux 10.0 and 10.1.
  • SuSE 10.0
    With ACPI it wouldn't boot.
    Without ACPI it would boot, but would lose connection to the USB mouse. After installation there was no access to the sound system.
    With 64 bit SuSE selected it would not boot
  • SuSE 10.1
    With ACPI there was no access to the sound system. There was no option for 32 / 64 bit software selection.
    With local APIC disabled there was no connection to mouse or touch-pad after initial software installation.
    With APIC and ACPI enabled an installation was completed. However, on booting the installed system about 2 screensful of error messages appeared on attempting to detect the sound system and the boot hung.
    
• 900 MHz Chembook
  This, vintage 2002, is the third laptop. It's still usable for Linux through SuSE 9.x, but 10.x overwhelms it.
• 200 MHz Chembook
  This, vintage 1998, is the second laptop I've owned and the first to run Linux. Though still working, it's too slow and low memory capacity to use for much, but it was good while it lasted!

See the pattern here? About 4 years to obsolescence.

I strongly recommend Micro Center at Mercado Center (3255 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA) in Santa Clara for their help with the next three laptops. The Acer was a really nice machine, but incompatible with the Linux distributions I use. Possibly other distributions would work better.

The WinBook W245 was almost as nice as the Acer, and (except for the usual Winmodem problem) was completely compatible with SuSE Linux 10.1.