Ubuntu
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Ubuntu 11.10: Oneiric Ocelot
The latest release of Ubuntu which came out in October 2011, brings further improvements to the new Unity desktop shell, specifically the "dash" view and the software centre. However hardware support is still poor in some areas and some annoying usability problems persist, such as very poor multi-monitor support. Overall, there is a disturbing trend toward less configuration options and a dumbing-down of the system settings centre. Where is the option to change the position of the launcher bar, for instance? Why remove the option to change whether the laptop screen dims on battery power in the power applet?
For more in-depth analysis of the changes in Ubuntu 11.10, see this (mostly positive) [review on Arstechnica http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2011/10/desktop-dreams-ubuntu-1110-reviewed.ars/1].
Dell specific
Most of our laptops are Dell's because they're a very Linux friendly manufacturer. Dell maintain their own repository of kernel modules (such as those needed for modems to work etc) and other specific configuration. So add it to your sources.list by appending the following (change hardy to what ever you're distro of Ubuntu is such as gutsy, intrepid or jaunty).
Then update and upgrade as usual,
Dell modems
I found Dell dgc modems to install easily with the driver from Dell, eg dgcmodem_1.04_i386.deb. But the other popular Conexant modem they use is hsf and I found that wouldn't compile on many Dell laptop models.
I was able to get an hsf modem to work at 14.4Kbps using the free driver from Linuxant. I had downloaded the deb version of the generic packages with source, for example hsfmodem_7.80.02.01full_i386.deb. After I installed it with dpkg -i it gave no errors, but still it would fail to detect a modem from the gnome ppp, but I then ran hsfconfig which compiled successfully and then asked questions about area code etc which it had not been able to do before. After this process, the auto-detection of the modem succeeded from gnome ppp.
Note: It's best to run through pppconfig from root and fill in the ISP details so that all the files are already set up before trying to connect from gnome ppp because it doesn't have permission to write to the ppp configuration files itself.
Note II: You can fix this permissions issue by setting permissions manually as follows:
Ubuntu Tweak
Remember "TweakUI" for fatware? Well this is the Ubuntu equivalent, gives easy access to all the internal OS and application settings and defaults.
Flash
There can be a number of different problems with flash installation and operation in Firefox under Ubuntu, but most issues can be dealt with by installing the FLASH-AID plugin which checks for the correct versions of flash components for your architecture and browser version. If version problems are found, FLASH-AID will build and run a script to uninstall incorrect components and install the correct ones.
DVD Ripping
We use dvd::rip, install it from the add/remove menu, then see Rip a DVD for usage details. I think some of the things installed for DVD reading above are required for the ripping to work properly. Note that currently our procedure only allows the xvid4 codec for the encoded result, divx is not working for us yet.
Adobe Acrobat Reader
The default evince document viewer that comes with Ubuntu is very good, but it doesn't handle some of the more sophisticated aspects of PDF document handling such as editable forms. To do these things currently still requires the Adobe package which can be installed from the Medibuntu repository.
Windows Emulator (Wine)
The windows emulator allows practically seamless integration of native windows applications into the Linux desktop environment. Internet Explorer is more difficult to set up in it than other applications due to its tight integration with the windows internal components, but a package is available allowing easy installation of multiple simultaneous Internet Explorer versions (see Installation on Ubuntu).
Below is a screenshot of my local laptop running Ubuntu. As you can see all the open windows are integrated naturally into the normal desktop environment but some of them are windows applications and some native Linux ones. The top browser window is Internet Explorer 6 running in windows emulation, but the bottom one is Ubuntu's Firefox. Music is playing from the Windows emulated Winamp in the top right, and the middle application is a Windows-only family tree program. I was able to drop a folder of music directly into the Winamp window to play it, and all file paths and open/save dialogue boxes can navigate the entire Linux directory tree just like a native application behaves.
Chromium Browser
From root do the following:
Package Script
This manual post-install needs to be converted into an automatic script which can then be added to the organicdesign-workstation package. There will need to be an overall configuration file such as /etc/organicdesign/organicdesign.conf which determines the main parameters such as what the associated server is etc.
Dual Monitor issues
One problem that often comes up with dual monitor setup in Ubuntu (persisting as of 11.04) is that there's nothing in the interface allowing the user to define which is the primary monitor having the panels with the launcher and notification icons etc.
But the monitors applet is actually just a graphical interface over the powerful xrandr utility. This tool can also be used to set the resolution - even custom resolutions, as for example shown in HDMI to DVI problem. The changes made with xrandr occur in real-time without any need to log out or restart anything to see the effects.
As an example, when I plugged a second monitor into my laptops HDMI port it automatically changed to an extended desktop setup, but the panels were all on the laptop screen. To move them across to the external monitor involves first querying xrandr to see what the current monitor names are:
From this we see that the external monitor is named HDMI1, so we can now make it primary as follows:
And voila, straight away, the panels shift across to the other screen :-)
See also
- Wikipedia:Ubuntu
- Ubuntu workshop
- Overview of various ways to install software on Ubuntu
- How to compile programs on Ubuntu
- Wubi - install Ubuntu into an existing Windows environment without affecting boot loader
- Apple wireless keyboard on Linux
- Transmission
- Migrate from Windows XP to Ubuntu
- How to fix VirtualBox USB support
