Ubuntu

I finally become so sickened by Windows that I'm willing to go through the difficult transition to Ubuntu. I'm expecting trouble since I'm using a two year old Toshiba laptop (Satellite A10) and I require it to work with extended desktop covering the laptop 1024x768 display and an external 1280x1024 LCD panel. I'm willing to change any applications if I have to, but I mainly used Firefox and Open Office so there should be no problem there.

File System

The drives are all currently in NTFS format which the Ubuntu system can't natively write to.

No problemo, just install the NTFS Configuration tool listed in synaptic and NTFS write-support can be turned on or off for internal and/or external drives. --Nad 00:11, 18 July 2007 (NZST)

Network

I was pleasantly surprised by how well the networking went. It has detected all my network interfaces and automatically connected to the local wireless network establishing internet access.

Video

As predicted, the dual-monitor setup is not inherently available, it's only operating on the external screen and the maximum resolution available is lower than the screens native resolution. After reading this on Ubuntu forums, it looks like my only option is Xinerama since it's the only dual-monitor solution which supports any arbitrary video hardware supported by XWindow.

• Ubuntu forums: Dual Monitor HowTo
• Ubuntu forums: Xinerama
• My /etc/X11/xorg.conf file
• My xorg.log file
• About xorg.conf
• xorg.conf syntax
• i810 Driver Details
• IntelLinuxGraphics Docs
• Example of i810 config
• Google search for i810 configuration
• No need for Xinerama?
• Another i810 example
• Google search for running i810 at different resolutions
• How to install the Intel modesetting driver
• Beginners guide to 915resolution

I tried installing the xserver-xorg-video-intel driver which has the new modesetting capability, but it fails with the following problem:

Note: this is actually not the problem because it's also present on successfull boots. The problem is an exception which seems to occur when failing to call xf86AllocateGARTMemory.

(EE) Detecting sil164 (EE) Unable to read from DVOI2C_E Slave 112

I tried installing the 915resolution hack, but still could not get the proper resolution on the external monitor. The monitor is being detected and communicated with properly, but the it falls back to 1024x768 saying that there's no mode called 1280x1024. I noticed that the two can run at different resolutions though, the external can run at 800x600 or 640x480 while the laptop panel remains at 1024x768.

(II) I810(0): Polyview: Using hsync range of 30.00-82.00 kHz (II) I810(0): Polyview: Using vrefresh range of 56.00-76.00 Hz (II) I810(0): Not using mode "1280x1024" (no mode of this name) (--) I810(0): Virtual size is 1024x768 (pitch 1024) (**) I810(0): Built-in mode "1024x768" (**) I810(0): Built-in mode "800x600" (**) I810(0): Built-in mode "640x480" (II) I810(0): Attempting to use 75.03Hz refresh for mode "1024x768" (854) (II) I810(0): Attempting to use 75.00Hz refresh for mode "800x600" (852) (II) I810(0): Attempting to use 75.00Hz refresh for mode "640x480" (850) (**) I810(0): Display dimensions: (380, 300) mm

Here's what the xorg log says about the 1280x1024 resolution which I can get to work in single monitor mode:

(II) I810(0): Generic Monitor: Using hsync range of 30.00-82.00 kHz (II) I810(0): Generic Monitor: Using vrefresh range of 56.00-76.00 Hz (II) I810(0): Increasing the scanline pitch to allow tiling mode (1280 -> 2048). (--) I810(0): Virtual size is 1280x1024 (pitch 2048) (**) I810(0): *Built-in mode "1280x1024" (**) I810(0): Built-in mode "1024x768" (**) I810(0): Built-in mode "800x600" (**) I810(0): Built-in mode "640x480" (II) I810(0): Attempting to use 75.02Hz refresh for mode "1280x1024" (858) (II) I810(0): Attempting to use 75.03Hz refresh for mode "1024x768" (854) (II) I810(0): Attempting to use 75.00Hz refresh for mode "800x600" (852) (II) I810(0): Attempting to use 75.00Hz refresh for mode "640x480" (850) (**) I810(0): Display dimensions: (380, 300) mm (**) I810(0): DPI set to (85, 86)

I've also tried upgrading the xorg components to 1.3 and the kernel to 2.6.22 along with the kernel modules, and none of these things have fixed the crashing of the intel driver in dual monitor mode.

Here is an example of the partially working internal panel display.

I got this effect again later where it covered the whole bottom screen, and I was able to see that it's actually the subtle colour fade of the ubuntu background image, but with the wrong palette information ;-)

I've re-installed a freash Feisty Fawn, but I came across a small tool called xrandr which allows adjustment of video properties at runtime. Unfortunately the one that comes with Feisty doesn't support dual display, so I'm doing a gutsy install of that on my nice new system :-/

It's upgrading these packages: libc6 libc6-i686 libslang2 tzdata util-linux xrandr

I have my doubts about this working though as many people report it not working with Xinerama - although those comments are from around 2005...

Email

Ubuntu comes with Evolution by default, but this can't import email messages from my backed up Outlook Express store folder. Also I don't need all the scheduling and organisational aspect as we use the wiki for that.

Tried Thunderbird, but this also does not import from Outlook Express.

File System

All my external drives are NTFS

Why I migrated

• To practice what I preach - only using open-source free software developed by the community
• The browser and office apps were painfully slow
• No control over removing undesirable features like the "security" scanning of all files on a newly attached drive
• Windows would lock my video files so I couldn't move, rename or delete them.
• Microsoft wouldn't fix many reported bugs (such as the one above) after months or even years of complaints
• Windows virus epidemic, and virus scanners slow everything down even more

Organic Design Site

Ubuntu was packaged with Firefox as the default browser, but there are a number of differences with the rendering compared to Firefox under windows. The most noticable difference is that the font has changed to serif.

Additional Software Installed

• Browser: Firefox2 (pre installed)
• Email: Thunderbird
• SMTP Server: Exim4, using local SMTP to send instead of ISP

Local SMTP not working reliably, tests ok for my POP, but not sending to others, changed back to ISP

• Text Editor: MooEdit (an excellent texteditor!)

first apt-get install libc6-dev libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev gettext intltool then ./configure && make && make install

Damn - no syntax highlighting langs available - I posted a question here

They said I probably needed libxml2-dev installed before running configure - Yip that did it ;-)

• Word processor: OpenOffice2 Writer (pre installed)
• Spreadsheet: OpenOffice2 Calc (pre installed)
• Image Editor: GIMP
• Vector Graphics: InkScape
• Database: MySQL Server 5
• Webserver: Apache2
• PHP5
• ImageMagick
• Media player: VLC (this worked out of the box for all my media, the default "Movie Player" needed to download codecs and couldn't find many of them)
• NTFS Configuration Tool (allows writing to NTFS drives)
• P2P: Azureus

Software I'm Investigation

• Devil's Pie (tutorial) (tutorial)- a way of overlaying rules onto windows
• TinyERP - an extensive open-source GPL business management application with Win32, GTK+ and Web interfaces

Log

• I've downloaded the Ubuntu 7.02 ISO, made a CD and booted it live to test it out before nuking the horrible but semi-functional shitware installation.
• Testing from the Live CD by making adjustments then restarting X with CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE
• Backed up important data on the windows drive
• I can't get the dual-monitor configuration to work, and when it doesn't work I have to reboot, but since I'm testing in the Live CD environment, the log information is lost, so I need to install on a writable disk.
• I don't want to nuke the windows partition if I can help it, but since Ubuntu can't natively write to NTFS, it can't install onto any of them. So to start I'm attempting an install onto my 4GB ram stick. (I'm actually able to install the OS while I write this since this is a Live CD environment)
• Day2: Wouldn't boot from RamStick and boot drive fucked up, installing onto main drive now.
• Rob came over and we got dual-monitors working but only at low res (800x600)
• I found out that it's not how high the res is, but that they can't both be different, so now both can work at 1024x768 (the max res of the smaller monitor)
• Day3: Tried installing newer driver and 915Resolution but they didn't work, and after trying to revert back, the display is more buggy. I'm going to start with a fresh install again - reinstalling now.
• Attempted installation of xserver-xorg-video-intel which uses the new (still unstable) modesetting driver that allows better control over the resolutions for dual head cards. But it failed, notes in video section below.
• Re-installation complete, current setup is a fully working dual-monitor configuration, except that the external monitor is running at 1024x768 instead of 1280x1024.
• Attempted to get proper resolution going using ModeLine's and 915resolution hack, but neither helped.
• Upgraded kernel image and all components, then tried xserver-xorg-video-intel again, but exactly the same problem, switching back to xserver-xorg-video-i810 is no problem.
• Day4: Tried installing xorg 1.3 and xorg-xserver-video-intel 2, but won't boot
• Downloading "Gutsy Gibbon", the pre-release of Ubuntu 7.10 which comes with xorg 1.3 and xorg-xserver-video-intel 2
• Day5: The Gutsy Gibbon LiveCD is too unstable, even the file browser wouldn't run, so I'm not going to install it. I tried some final upgrades of kernel and modules, but still no go, and now the system is unstable so now I'm reverting back to a fresh installation of Fiesty Fawn.
• Did this search and found this discussion re xorg-overloading, it says this i810 driver update is needed for the ForceBIOS option to work which I'm trying out - no go so far.