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| Fun with Ubuntu Linux |
Ubuntu Linux - Introduction | LiveCD Trials and Installing | Multiple Booting and Grub | Networking | Applications | Media | Email and Contacts - transfers | IMAP v POP and Software considerations| WINE | Encryption | Web Authoring | Simple Backup| Hardware Support |A Legacy Laptop - Toshiba Portege 3440 | Disabling Suspend and Hibernate | Looking Forwards | Hardware Support Table | Software Requirements Table | Reader Feedback || Ubuntu Linux on the Move | Communications Requirements Table || Ubuntu Linux on the Take (Photo Support) || Open Source, Free and Cross-Platform Software
I have been experimenting with Linux because I have got so tired of the continual updates to Microsoft Windows XP and the associated Virus checkers, Firewalls and Malware detectors. It is almost impossible to prevent a large data flow when one first connects and many programs seek information on updates etc. I have noticed that there are dozens of processes running in the background under Windows XP and the hard drive is now in continuous use even minutes after the last user activity has finished. This all makes Windows XP difficult to use securely whilst traveling and on a costly mobile connection rather than Broadband.
Linux has come a long way since I last looked at it and many of the main Linux distributions had what are called LiveCD versions where you have bootable CD which allows you to trial the system without having to load anything onto your machine. The next stage is to install a dual (or multiple boot system) and the install programs will automatically partition your disk and put in a boot loader to allow you to choose when the machine starts up.
I did some research and the best seemed to be a Linux distribution called Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) which promises 3 year support (updates, fixes etc.) for the desktop version and has a LiveCD and a simple install from the LiveCD. For those with some prior knowledge Ubuntu is based on the Debian implementation of Linux with the GNOME desktop interface - Kubunto is a variation with the KDE interface. It is directed towards the desktop and is arguably the most popular version for home use, a position it has achieved in less than 2 years from the first release. A good background introduction to Ubuntu is given in the Ubuntu Wikipedia Entry. The name comes from the African concept of ubuntu one part of which loosely translates as "humanity towards others".
This page has become a record of my progress with details of all the changes I have made (and how) to the systems so I can repeat them in the future. It is in a sort of chronological order although I have done some re-ordering to avoid swapping back and forwards between different aspects. I have also included many of the links I found useful at the time. I hope it will be useful to others and perhaps avoid yet more reinventions of the wheel - in due course it may become refined enough to became a 'guide'. The content has been tested by using it to set up a classic legacy laptop - the slimline Toshiba Portege which has led to one correction and some clarifications making the page even longer - I am trying to work out how to split it up further without losing continuity.
I have extracted the majority of the mobile aspects to a new page - Ubuntu Linux on the Move and have started another new page covering what is perhaps the second most important activity after communications for inveterate travelers like ourselves, that is handling all the photographs we take with digital cameras, viewing them and ultimately putting them into a form that can be used on our web site. Retaining the fun approach I have called it Ubuntu Linux on the Take. Logically the third should be "Ubuntu Linux on the Make" covering Web Authoring!
The first step is to try out the Ubuntu "Dapper Drake" LiveCD on any machines or are thinking of using and deciding if Ubuntu Linux, or any Linux is for you. My first impressions were very favourable. The LiveCD version ran immediately on both my AMD 2500 based desktop with 512 mbytes RAM and on my new Toshiba L20 laptop with 752 Mbytes RAM. It even recognised the WiFi card in the laptop and it was a simple matter to input the WEP code to give WiFi access. In a few hours with a LiveCD version I had learned enough to have access to Windows shared folders over the network. As a real test I plugged in by Bluetooth dongle and that was recognised and I could find my phone. The LiveCD distribution includes Open Office (compatible with Microsoft Office), Firefox and Evolution which is an email, contacts, tasks etc. package which is close in power to the earlier versions of Microsoft Outlook. The actual desktop and windows are cleaner and better thought out than in Windows and there is a useful workspace switching allowing one to do multitask very efficiently. I was very impressed even when running from CD and for simple tasks a LiveCD offers a safe way to work on any available machine. The trials gave confidence to proceed to first install on the desktop then on the laptop as well as a general understanding of Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular.
Ubuntu differs from many Linux implementations as you do not need to be a root user (administrator) to do system work but can use the terminal command sudo (SuperUser Do) to temporarily carry out root activities after entering a password which 'sticks' for 15 minutes - a big security and safety feature. Linux system work is still more terminal oriented than Windows although it is fair to remember that it is virtually impossible to avoid the Run Command completely even in XP.
By this point I knew I was not wasting my time so it seemed sensible to start to lay down some ground rules and define my requirements without which it could have just ended up as an interesting academic challenge. I already had various specifications of hardware and software so I took the approach of constructing a big table of requirements which I progressively filled in - it now forms the conclusions. Almost from the start it seemed that USB TV and Video Editing are the only activities which would have to be left to Windows as they combine hardware and Windows specific hardware. What my requirements specifically lack at present is a serious look at an overall system involving all our machines and how to optimise the mix of Linux and Windows however setting up dual booting on my 'Power PC' and the new Toshiba Satellite laptop seems the obvious initial way forwards.
Having convinced myself that most of the software I needed was available and that the main hardware would work I decided to firstly install on my AMD Athlon 2500 based machine. This machine has two hard drives and already had the ability to boot both Windows SE and Windows XP with hidden copies of both operating systems on the second drive as well as a variety of partitions with FAT32 shared drives and NSTC drives. I squeezed down the size of a number of the partitions and made room for an unallocated space of 13.5 Gigabytes long so the Ubuntu Installer would have room to make a primary partition for itself and an extra swap drive which all Linux systems seem to use. The existing partitioning and dual boot was done using Partition Magic 8.0 which has never given any trouble in the past. The Ubuntu Install was allowed to use its defaults and used the unallocated space I had provided for the main Linux ext3 primary partition and stole some space from the existing extended partition for the swap file. Unfortunately the partitioning and booting program used by Ubuntu during the setting up conflict with that from Partition Magic which reported partition errors although the Linux tools shoed no errors and everything works fine. In the end I added some unallocated space between the Windows and Linux partitions just in case.
The Toshiba Satellite L20 Pro laptop had one extra NTSF partition for data which I reduced in size to allow 12 Gbytes for Ubuntu and made space in the extended partition for the swap file using Partition magic. I also used Partition Magic to set up the Linux partitions. When Installing Ubuntu it made a sensible looking default choice but I wanted to avoid problems with changing partition sizes so I used the option to set up partitions manually which ran Gparted. I left them as they were and then set the existing ext3 partition I had created to be root "/" , the swap was already set up. I ticked the box to reformat both. The install then proceeded from the CD, the time taken to coming alive being 25 minutes. I then checked set up the Wifi Access point name (case sensitive) and WEP key to get Internet access at elapsed time 30 minutes. I downloaded all the updates from System -> Administration -> Update manager - there were 194 Mbytes so that was all complete set up and rebooted by elapsed time 65 minutes. Interestingly on this installation I have icons for the Windows disks on the desktop and an icon for the network on the top panel which is the equivalent of the tooltray. At a latter stage I used Partition Magic to change the format of the shared drive from NTFS to FAT32 for better compatibility which I would recommend for a basic dual boot system.
Since setting up the two machines for dual booting I have read that it is very desirable if not essential to defragment the disk drives first - I think I did so on the desktop but had not realised the importance.
The multiple booting on the Desktop showed up a problem I should have expected - I already had two versions of Windows being dual booted by the Partition Magic PQBoot program before loading another multiple booting program. This is almost certainly the reason why Partition Magic shows errors as some of its boot configuration has been undone by the extra partitioning so beware if you already have multiple bootable systems. I found I had switch with PQBoot before changing between Windows 98 SE and Windows XP as well as in the Linux boot manager which is called GRUB. This should not be a problem for normal users who did not have a very complex system allowing multiple boots already.
I tidied up the boot order and reduced the options (by commenting them out) in /boot/grub/menu.lst having backed up the original by:
You should read the instructions in the file and you may find that you have to redo some of the commenting out if you have a kernel update.
It was much easier on the Toshiba Laptop as I knew what I was doing and the system was much less complex - I backed up the file as above and then commented out everything but Ubuntu and Windows XP options and set it to save the last option although I have since put back so of the other options whilst i am still developing the systems. By the time I had run tests of rebooting to Windows and Ubuntu the elapsed time from starting the install was only 90 minutes and I had reached the point where somebody just using Windows XP would probably not notice that a multiple boot option had briefly appeared!
At a much latter stage I discovered how to add a nice background to the boot screen (for example see schultz-net.dk - Grub boot screens) and created a directory under /boot/grub/ with a collection of images including my current image. One only then needs to add a single line to the /boot/grub/menu.lst file which, assuming a dual boot system so boot partition is hd0,2 is
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splashimages/current.xpm.gz
Grub modifies the Master Boot Record which can be replaced using either an old Windows boot disk (cd or floppy) with fdisk on it, then run fdisk /mbr . Alternatively you can boot from the Windows XP CD and run the recovery consul.
You can restore GRUB after a Windows installation by following the steps below which are an amalgamation of information from the Ubuntu site and other places:
This is all you need to do if you had initially installed Ubuntu into a Windows system. If you are adding Windows then Ubuntu will not have anything in the grub configuration for Windows and you’ll have to edit the grub boot menu file.
Open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst with the following command having backed up the original by:
sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst_bak_1 sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
You’ll see a sample section for Windows, which you’ll want to un-comment and add to the boot menu list in whatever position you want it in. (un-comment by removing the #’s) so, for example:
title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
The (hd0,0) assumes that Windows is installed on the primary drive and the first partition. If you had installed Windows somewhere different then it should reflect that.
[Section added 3 June 2007]
This was an important step and the order of difficulty was not what I expected - I could access files on Windows machines over the Network immediately using Places -> Network Servers although files the creation date is only displayed correctly for files on NTSF partitions. I have not found a workaround yet or any reference to it despite extensive web searches.
Initially I could see but not mount Windows Drives on the same machine. This is a security issue which can be fooled by adding them to the list of demountable drives by:
sudo cp /etc/pmount.allow /etc/pmount_backup.allow
sudo gedit /etc/pmount.allow
# and appended the following line at the end of file
/dev/hda6 # it may not be 6 in your case
The drives appear in the files system in the /media directory along with the CDs, DVDs such as USB drives and other such devices. The same trick is needed if you use a Compact Flash to PCMCIA converter to allow it to be mounted as a drive by adding /dev/hdc1. Find out what to use by looking at the error message when you try to mount it!
A better way for Windows drives is to instead modify the system files to mount the drives at start-up - FAT32 partitions can be mounted for read-write but NTSC partitions should be read only due to inconsistencies in its advanced file system - Read the Details here first
To mount my FAT32 Partition (Windows E: Drive) which mounts as hda6 on the laptop , I modified the /etc/fstab file as follows:
Interestingly the Laptop installation had mounted them in /media with linking icons for the drives on the desktop from the start by entries in fstab. This was not the case with the desktop install.
This needs a file server to be installed on the Linux machine called Samba (Using Add/Remove as usual) and sharing the files by System -> Administration -> Shared Folders. Highlight one of the shares and click properties which will give access to a screen where you set up the name of the share which will be visible on the network and then click again on General Windows settings to set the workgroup name which should be the same as on the Windows Network. Finally restart Samba by:
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
You the need to set up a username and password to use on the Windows machines when you log into the Ubuntu Linux machines by:
sudo smbpasswd -a username
and then restart Samba by
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
The sharing worked fine on the desktop and laptop at this point the first time but after the machine has been restarted one can see all the shares but not access those on the Linux machines until after another samba restart has been done. Googling produced a known fault Bug #9208 in gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu) The cause seems to be a system bug in this version as a couple of links which start up the Samba Daemon are incorrect and when they are corrected Samba is started and it is much better. The timing in the start-up sequence on the two machines was different and everything worked when the daemon start was delayed to be the same as on the desktop. I am describing the fix for my own sake in case I forget - it should be fixed by the time anyone finds this although I have had to repeat the fix after a new Kernel was installed and once again a few days later so it may take a while!
lscd /etc/rc2.d
# check for a broken link to /samba (it displays in a different colour)
# and replace with a slightly different link to /etc/init.d/samba
sudo rm K09samba
sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/samba /etc/rc2.d/S91samba
# repeat in /etc/rc3.d
This was much easier than I expected. Use System -> Administration -> Printing -> New printer -> Network Printer:Windows Printer which takes one on to identify the printer on the network and has a selection procedure which has a huge range of printers with drivers available including the members of the Epson Stylus series - I have a C66.
Many of the important applications and programs are installed automatically including OpenOffice (which is also available Open Source for Windows) and Evolution which provides email, contacts, calendar and other services similar to Microshaft Outlook - a prototype (beta) version of Evolution is available for Windows.
There is also a vast collection of supported and automatically updated Open Source programs access via Application -> Add/Remove -> Search and then tick the relevant box(es). If you do not find the program then tick the boxes to show unsupported and commercial programs. If this does not find the program you want then you will need to use the Synaptic package manager which can be accessed by the Advanced Button and again doing searches. In some cases you may nee to add extra areas to be searched but that will be covered under the program itself.
Checking my Applications lists I find I have added:
Several of these are from the 'Unsupported List' in the Add/Remove facility or using the 'Advanced' to get to the Synaptic Package Manager . They involve large downloads but note that you can also enable use of the CD if you have a slow link. Skype and Wine need specially procedures. See also the list of Windows programs running under Wine. Several of the utilities can and hane been be added to the top panel.
There is an assessment of ease of installation, set up and functionality in the conclusions.
I thought I ought to mention that one has been able to run the Open Source application suite OpenOffice on Windows for a long time so there is really no need to buy expensive Microsoft packages. OpenOffice can be set to default to use Microsoft Windows file formats.
More recently Evolution has been ported to Windows and I have been running a copy on one of my machines. The installation used to be difficulties but it has been sorted out by Mike Pinto and an installer can be found at Evolution on Win32. It is a big download of 51 Mbytes as it seems to install a lot of the Linux system but once installed it is indistinguishable from the version on Linux other than the help files seem to be missing. I am not sure about SpamAssassin being present either.
The web editor I am using on Ubuntu Linux to write this documentation is also available as open-source software for Windows at Nvu - The Complete Web Authoring System for Linux, Macintosh and WindowsThere are many programs built in for playing, ripping etc., media files but, by default, they use no proprietary (licensed software, codecs etc.). These can all be added although some for playing multinational DVDs are illegal in some parts of the world. The most common missing codec is that for MP3. The whole issue is covered at great length in many places and a good start is in the page on Restricted Formats in the Ubuntu Help Community Files. This has a link to how to use the EasyUbuntu automated installation to avoid a lot of terminal work - I used it and afterwards I could rip and play MP3 files which was my object. The code to get and run EasyUbuntu is:
wget http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/files/easyubuntu-3.022.tar.gz
tar -zxf easyubuntu-3.022.tar.gz
cd easyubuntu
sudo python easyubuntu.in
It is now best to go to Welcome to EasyUbuntu and download the installer package as it is more up-to-date and puts EasyUbuntu into the Applications menu.
I installed all the multimedia extensions in full and also Skype on the desktop
Another of the critical functions I checked at an early stage was burning CDs and DVDs. Initially I did not realise that there was a simple mechanism built into the Nautilus file browser accessible via Places -> CD/DVD creator which gives you a folder into which you drag and drop the files for the CD/DVD. If you want to make Audio CDs then there is a program called Serpentine (Applications -> Sound and Video -> Serpentine).
K3b is a very sophisticated CD/DVD burner similar to Nero in its professional feel. A trial using K3b successfully burnt a full data CD and verified it - it selected speeds etc. to match the burner and disk. It looks as if it rates as highly as Nero for these jobs. The only slight downside is that it is designed for the KDE interface so it runs with a different look which gives an interesting insight into the differences between GNOME and KDE. I added MP3 burning support to K3b by opening a terminal window and installing a support package
sudo apt-get install libk3b2-mp3
This has proved to be possible but a complex and time consuming process. Outlook uses a proprietary format with mail, contacts, tasks, calendar items etc all in a single .pst file and at this time the only access is via a Windows .dll . Outlook will export the contacts list as comma and tab delimited files (I used the DOS Comma Delimited format) which one can import using the Outlook Format into Evolution directly. My contact list had 602 entries and I checked the number was the same and as far as I can tell all the fields were transferred correctly.
There is no similar Export for Email messages within Outlook so one has to have an intermediate stage. Various email programs have facilities to import mail from Outlook and the most obvious to use is Thunderbird as it runs under both Windows and Linux. Note the import has to be done under Windows because of the proprietary Dynamic Link Library (DLL) required. Thunderbird can import Outlook .pst files when run under Windows and uses the same mail box type as Evolution - the Mbox type where each directory has an individual file containing all the messages in that folder. Evolution has an Import command with an option of Berkeley Mailboxes (Mbox) but unfortunately only one at a time! This is fine if you only have an Inbox, Outbox and Sent Items but more tedious if you have filing system like mine with nearly one hundred nested folders and thousands of emails giving several years of audit trail!
To set up Thunderbird under Windows takes only minutes including move accounts, contacts and email:I transferred 600 contacts and 20 folders of emails without problems.
More recently I have seen documents which indicate that you do not need to import but just copy folders into the correct place which would save a lot of work - it is certainly that is the way to do it between versions of Thunderbird - see the next section for a full procedure
The first step in moving from Outlook to Thunderbird on Linux is again to transfer everything to Thunderbird on the Windows machine. The move from Thunderbird to Thunderbird is much easier especially for contacts where one can export in LDIF format by -> Address Book -> Tools -> Export -Save as type LDIF and Import the same way by -> Address Book -> Tools -> Import as type LDIF. You can also use a Windows program Outpod to save Contacts and Calendar items as files of vCards and iCal files which can be read by many programs including Thunderbird - it was written for iPods.
Email takes a little more work as you have to identify your profile folder and move the appropriate files and folders into the matching profile on the other machine. On the Linux machine the mail is in .mozilla-thunderbird/sillyname.default/mail/Local Folders/ . Remember files starting in . are hidden in gedit so use View -> Show hidden files. On Windoz it is likely to be in C/Documents and Settings/Username/Application Data/Thunderbird/profile/silyname.default/Mail/Local Folders/ I have found that folders have to be transferred in groups comprising a folder called say Outlook Mail.sbd and two files called Outlook Mail and Outlook Mail.msf . This should give you everything from Outlook - if you want other mail from Thunderbird you can identify it and do the same trick transferring each set of two or three files/folders you want.I hope keep the contacts up to date by keeping new or changed contacts in separate contacts lists on the laptop/desktop and then Sending them as Vcards via Bluetooth to my XDA Exec (A sophisticated PDA) thus keeping that in step and then synchronising it with the Desktop/Laptop.
Their seems to be few ways for email other than a tool available within a Freeware package called IMAPSize . The tool in this package called mbox2eml converts Mbox folders to individual .eml files which can be dropped into Outlook Express and thence imported into Outlook. I tried this out with a few email from the copy of Evolution I have running under Windows and it seems to work fine - one should note that there is no control over which messages you import from Outlook Express to Outlook - you get everything so clean up first!
This is a new section covering the advantages of using an IMAP mail system whilst one is mobile over the more conventional POP mail.
POP Mail: Most people understand how POP (Post Office Protocol) mail works, the incoming mail is delivered and held on a server at your ISP and, in the simplest case, you download it to your machine on demand (usually called a Send/Receive activity in your email package) and it is deleted from the server. This was fine when a user had only one machine in one place. Nowadays many people access email from home, their office, from a mobile and perhaps a PDA and Phone. This leaves ones incoming mail fragmented in many places. Most email packages therefore allow you to collect your email whilst leaving a copy on the server and many allow one to just download the headers or a restricted amount of data in each email. This is a much better way of working as the download and deletion from the server is done on one machine. It does not help with outgoing mail which has to be copied to another account or some other method to allow an audit trail. If one uses different email packages which can not interchange saved emails it all becomes a bit of a nightmare.
IMAP: There is an alternative to POP mail called IMAP which stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. In this case the email is stored on the server and not downloaded automatically and one can create addition folders on the server so one can have a complete filing system on the server and available whilst one is online, on corporate systems there may be shared folders accessible by many users. Email stored on an IMAP server can be accessed and manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling as well as ones phone/PDA, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers. In the simplest case data is only transferred as required - when you select your inbox or a remote folder the headers are transfer - when you select an email the message body is transferred and only when you open an attachment is the attachment transferred You can of course copy anything to a local folder on your machine to work on it and when you finally send a reply (whilst online) it is saved on the server and accessible from any other machine. IMAP is at its best when you are on a corporate LAN or a Broadband always on internet connection - a GPRS/3G connection charged on data transfers is acceptable. There is more comprehensive analysis at The IMAP Connection -- Comparing Two Approaches to Remote Mailbox Access: IMAP vs. POP.
Implementation: Many ISPs including Freezone offer the choice of a mix of POP or IMAP mailboxes and in some cases such as the Horde IMP system used by Freezone they are identical other than the access protocols and port number used. Most IMAP mailboxes are also accessible via a webmail interface in an internet cafe or on any friends machine. Even if you do not want to change completely without extensive trials it is worth setting up a single IMAP mailbox when you are travelling so you can transfer mail from your 'mobile' machines via an IMAP mailbox to you home machines filing system via the IMAP mailbox without worries about the incompatible local mailbox and folder formats. You can also tidy up whilst travelling whenever you get a fast WiFi data link in an internet cafe. I do not feel comfortable solely depending on a remote server to store my emails long term but for a few months between archives it seems a very sensible way to proceed. With a GPRS/3G connection where one pays for data transfers rather than time online, it seems a very economical way to operate and most email packages allow one to download selected local copies for offline working as well as remote copies. So far I have set up one IMAP box for archive and transfer purposes whilst continuing to use POP mailboxes set up to only download copies to my machines for my main accounts whilst travelling but I suspect that will change shortly when I have developed data flow efficient procedures.
Some cautions: Both POP and IMAP protocols are define by RFCs but the implementation by email packages may not be rigorous when it comes to some of the more advanced features. Note that the folders you create in an IMAP environment may not be where you would expect - the RFCs imply they should be under the IMAP Inbox folder and that only shared folders are at the same level. The display may be different between Webmail and different MAPI email systems. It is possible that POP implementations of features such as leaving emails on the server for a fixed time differ between email packages and may be implemented locally or on the server so if you have different settings or ways those features are implemented between packages you may have a problem. The same may go for subscriptions to folders (whether they are visible on the client automatically) and I have noticed that if I unsubscribe for a high level folder with a subfolder still visible on Thunderbird then Outlook produces some inconsistent error messages. I suggest keeping it simple initially if you are using different email clients and machines and experiment at each step if you decide on a fancy way to work. A good way to start investigation is to see if the same mailbox can be accessed by POP, IMAP and Webmail without problems. There is a useful free program called IMAPSize which does far more than its name implies and has associated utilities which can be very useful in transferring email between Outlook and Thunderbird
I initially had difficulty in getting the junk mail filter in Evolution to work and eventually realised that it automatically used a SpamAssassin plugin which is not installed automatically by Ubuntu. You can load it using Applications Add/Remove -> Advanced and search for spamassassin. The source of information I found also recommended making sure that:
SpamAssassin uses trainable Bayesian filters to perform the spam check. When the software detects mail that appears to be junk mail, it will flag it and hide it from your view. Messages that are flagged as junk mail are displayed only in the Junk folder. The junk mail filter needs to learn which kinds of mail are legitimate and which are not by your training it. When you first start using junk mail blocking, check the Junk folder to be sure that legitimate mail doesn't get flagged as junk mail. If good mail, is incorrectly flagged, remove it from the Junk folder by right-clicking it and selecting Mark as Not Junk. If Evolution misses junk mail, right-click the message, then click Mark as Junk. The filter can recognize similar messages in the future, and becomes more accurate as time goes on.
There is another option in Evolution for Include Remote Tests which I suspect also needs a plug-in to enable it to check blacklists [on the server?] when you have your internet connection open.msttcorefonts
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
so I could access my GPS with the GPSU program which ran fine when loaded with Wine and again created a link on the desktop.
I also added a link to my USB-Serial cable which shows up as /dev/ttyUSB0 (see below) by
ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 com2
In this case I could not access my GPS with the GPSU program although there were indications it knew the port existed.
Overall this has got 3 out 4 of the programs I missed running with Linux.
I was told about Picasa in feedback on my web page as a replacement for IrfanView. Irfanview is a picture editor which I like because it has batch conversion and renaming which allow me to create different size pictures for the web site differing in name eg xxxxxxxxi.jpg xxxxxxxw.jpg and xxxxxxxxb.jpg for my dual size popups. Picasa is a Google program which does a superb job of handling pictures and runs both under Windows and now Linux. It runs Windows code via Wine which they have put extensive work into developing for the Open Source movement. I have it installed on the Linux laptop and desktop and on a Windows Desktop. The two are almost identical in interface and it is one of the smoothest GUIs I have met on either. Purists may feel that a native Open Source version would be better but regardless of that Google have ported it to Linux rather than Apple and with Debian/ubuntu one of the specific flavours. It is a tremendous step forwards in acceptance of Linux in general and confirmation that Ubuntu is the way forwards in the future.
Picasa allows you to make a series of reversible changes to a picture in a very easy way - the GUI interface makes a rotation and colour balance almost trivial whilst keeping he original files completely intact. You can then 'star' (high level select) many files in multiple folders and then export them (with changes permanently applied) to a folder for making a CD etc. The export allows them to be resized - ideal for my purposes but does not provide the renaming although a single simple command line can do that in a terminal. I will now export each size to a separate directory then rename and merge them. Overall Picasa largely replaces Canon Zoombrowser, Irfanview and Paintshop Pro for dealing with pictures efficiently and without messing up the EXIF parameters.
Batch renaming is well explained in How to Bulk Rename Files in Linux and the command I use to add an i to the filename before the extension is:
rename -v 's/\.jpg/i\.jpg/' *.jpg
Note the bit in ' ' quotes is a perl regular expression and I am not going to explain those here! It however shows the power of Linux to do almost anything quickly in a command line.We require encryption to protect any sensitive information whilst we are travelling. Linux has OpenPGP which offers a superset of the usual PGP standard but defaults to be compatible with the encryption levels available in PGP 8 which we are using. It is accessed by the gpg program which operates in terminal mode.
gpg --encrypt ~/Desktop/homewine.htm > ~/Desktop/homewine.htm.pgp
gpg --decrypt ~/Desktop/homewine.htm.pgp > ~/Desktop/homewine.htm
There is also a GUI interface called Seahorse which can be installed by Add/Remove which handles the creation and management of keys much easier than using gpg directly. It is also supposed to add facilities into the text editor and file browser. The right click encryption of a file and encryption/decryption in the text editor work fine as does the GUI program to create and manage keys. In theory double clicking on a PGP file ought to bring up the screens to open it but there seems to be a problem in Seahorse 8.1 or Ubuntu Dapper Drake which prevent that. After a bit of searching and playing about I realised that it worked if the .gpg extension was used so it was a simple job to add the same program as an option for opening .pgp files namely seahorse --decrypt using the right click menu on a .pgp file -> Open with other application -> Use a Custom Command and filling in the box with seahorse --decrypt .
Evolution has built in encryption and signing for emails using keys created in terminal mode or managed by Seahorse. Full details of how to set it up and use it are in the Evolution help files.
Thunderbird does not have secure encryption in the main program however it is added by an extension which can be downloaded by the usual Applications -> Add/Remove _> Advanced and search for monzilla-thunderbird-enigmail. This adds inline style pgp encryption and also provides a key manager interface. It found my existing keys etc set up by seahorse and gnupg and works well.The other feature which is required for looking after data securely is a way to erase files without traces. It is no good being able to encrypt a file if you can not delete the original or working copies. Linux has a built in command shred which does a multiple pass write of data selected to make a read based on residual information at the edges of the magnetic tracks almost impossible before the file is deleted. This is not foolproof for all file systems and programs as temporary copies made be made and modern file systems do not always write data in the same place however on an ext2 or ext3 system with the default settings in Ubuntu Linux it is acceptable. Do a man shred to find out more.
There is no GUI interface for shred so I wrote a simple script. This took a few days to get up the learning curve of programming in bash and how the system was set up which will pay off handsomely in the future. A good place to start is LinuxCommand.org: Learning the shell. The important piece of information is that the addition of a path to a /bin directory is set in ubuntu linux in .bashrc not .bash_profile as is described in some places. Also note that files starting with a . are hidden - use View -> Hidden Files in the File browser to find them. The lines I added were:
# Additions to the standard ~/.bashrc file to set up path to
# /bin directory in home folder
PATH=$PATH:~/bin
I then had a folder in which to put script files which could be accessed from any directory. My first script to shred a file follows - if you want to follow it in detail remember that man any_command gives a summary of what it does and its options:
The reads at the end of each part are necessary to prevent the Terminal Window closing before you have seen what happens.
The script files must be given the correct permissions by
The last step is to create a launcher on the desktop which can also be dragged onto the bars. Right click anywhere on the desktop -> Create Launcher Fill in a name; browse to the ~/bin directory and script name; tick run in terminal; add an icon if required and that is it. The Launcher can also be dragged onto the panel.
It all sounds very simple but it took me a while to get scripting together the first time despite having done some programming in my time.
Whilst looking into encryption I came across some references to TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows XP/2000 and Linux which attracted me because it:
It does very much what PGPDisk does - it creates a Virtual Disk with the contents encrypted into a single file or onto a disk partition or removable media such as a USB stick. In fact it does it rather better than PGPDisk in many ways and in the Windows version it has all the same automatic demount etc options. The encryption is all on the fly so you have a file, you mount it as a disk and from then on it is used just like a real disk and everything is decrypted and re-encrypted invisibly in real time. The virtual Drive is unmounted automatically at close down and one should have closed all the open documents using the Virtual Drive by that point just like when you shut down normally. The advantage is that you never have the files copied onto a real disk so there are no shadows or temporary files left behind and one does not have to do a secure delete. I have loaded it onto two of my Windows systems.
Truecrypt obviously installs deep into the operating system in order to encrypt decrypt invisibly on the fly. This has meant in the past that it was specific to a Linux Kernel and had to be recompiled/installed every time a Kernel was updated. In fact the early versions demanded a rebuild of the Kernel itself which was beyond what I wanted to do. A procedure has now been developed which makes the installation much easier which is fully described at Installing Truecrypt 4.2 on Ubuntu 6.06 - Ubuntu Forums One needs to check carefully in the forums and have the latest version of the Kernel but for me it only involved:
And that is it. The command line interface is simplistic but one one has the encrypted file already made on a Windows system then only two commands are essential
Nvu has proved to be a very adequate WYSIWYG editor which I have entirely use to produce the Ubuntu Web pages and the uploaded them with gFTP. I have noticed that the HTML source is a bit untidy and tends to gain a lot of extra lines. Tools ->Preferences -> General -> Reformat Source Code helps. Nvu is OpenSource and available for Windows.
I discovered there is a HTML syntax checker and re-formatter called Tidy which corrects mark-up in a way compliant with the latest standards, and is optimal for the popular browsers. Tidy is a product of the World Wide Web Consortium and will tidy up the source and indent it etc for easy viewing. It can be installed using Add/Remove -> Advanced and search for Tidy. It is a command line package but fairly intuitive (man tidy or tidy -h will give you the information to run it) Errors are reported. Useful options are -m to modify the source file, -i to indent output and - w nn to wrap at line nn . A typical call is:
Also Note that Nvu also has built in tools for mark-up clean-up and checking via the W3C on-line HTML validator so there are no excuses for bad code and every page can display the validated symbol at the bottom.
Arachnophilia is another web editor which I used to use a lot. It has recently been updated and the latest versions run under Sun Java 1.4 or higher and are both cross-platform and true Freeware. In fact I use the author's definitions of what freeware is elsewhere. Before running Arachnophilia you need to load the correct version of Sun Java in Ubuntu - the some versions of the free package which may already be loaded are not suitable and you should install the Sun Java and also make a change so it is used by default.
First check for which version you are using by
java -version
GNU libgcj is the one that does not work although it is version 1.4
Now see if any others are present, I found the correct one was loaded but not the default so try:
update-java-alternatives -l
If you have a Sun Java higher than 1.4 then select it by, for example
sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-1.5.0-sun
If you do not have then you have to use Applications -> Add/Remove -> Advanced -> Search for sun-java and Mark the sun-java5-bin sun-java5-jre and sun-java5-plugin for installation (right click) -> Apply then go back through the two lines above to check it is there and select it.
Now you can download the Arachnophilia.jar and put it somewhere safe as you will use it every time you start Arachnophilia - I put it in my home directory but hid it by renaming it to .Arachnophilia.run . Now install by~/.ArachnophiliaIt is rerun by he same invocation but it does not have to waste time setting up and comes up immediately in it's saved state. There is an old write up at Arachnophilia which I am in the process of updating.
These have all been moved to a new page PHP Scripts and Ubuntu
I should not leave a discussion of software without mentioning backing up. There are a number of backup packages available but I am trying Simple Backup which s a simple backup solution intended for desktop use created within Google Summer of Code 2005 for Ubuntu with the mentoring of the Ubuntu team. It is a tiny download and seems very comprehensive in the ways you can chose ti include and exclude files based on location, size, type etc. It can run automatically and will do periodic full backups with incremental backups of changed files. By default it saves the backup as a compressed file in /var/backup and the file seems very small at under 400 Mbytes with default settings. You can restore individual files etc and in theory they can be restored to a different location although that feature has not worked for me. It is all very easy with a good GUI interface and is found in Systems ->Administration. Simple Backup is downloaded by Add/Remove advanced or Synaptic package manager and search for sbackup
Skype was installed following the instructions in the Unofficial Ubuntu Guide - How to install Messenger (Skype)
* In a terminal window
sudo gedit /etc./apt/sources.list
* Add the following lines at the end of file
## Repository for Skype
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
* Save the edited file
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install skype
It is run by Applications -> Internet -> Skype
The microphone levels could not be adjusted sufficiently using the volume control panel and the procedure suggested in Fixing the Errant Microphone was followed. This opens a simple but effective GUI to adjust all the facilities offered by the audio interface including a 20 dB boost.
Run alsamixer in a terminal window
Unmute all the outputs by hitting “m”
Hit tab to go the capture settings
Highlight the “Mic” setting using the arrow keys.
Hit space to enable the microphone.
Highlight the “Capture” setting using the arrow keys.
Hit space to enable capture (note that just because you have
volume bar here doesn’t mean it is enabled).
If you need the microphone boost use the arrow keys to get
across and highlight the boost setting and hit m to toggle it
Hit escape to exit
I have not found any documentation for alsamixer and although the above works it does not seem a very consistent in when to chose m and space.
Having set up the levels I have found Skype works well although I have had to restart it a couple of times when making a series of calls as it has told me I had an Audio problem - perhaps too high a level as Skype documentation advises against using the 20 dB boost I need.
I have since found that there are options in the volume control on the panel to see more options including the Microphone boost tick box. Double click the icon to open the volume control.
Up to now we have been considering systems with broadband access through a Ethernet or Wifi connection from an ADSL/ Modem/Router/Firewall box. My section covering Modem support for when you have no broadband access and are on the move has got far too large and has been moved to a new page - Ubuntu Linux on the Move.
For completeness here it is worth noting that support for some types of modem is poor in all versions of Linux. The type of modem which is used in many machines and built into many recent cards are often referred to as Winmodems or soft modems because they use Windows and the processor to do much of the hard work in software rather than do it on the chip or card. This includes not only internal modems but many external USB modems and includes ADSL modems. This software is often proprietary and Linux is poorly supported by most manufacturers. I therefore got out my old but very trusty US Robotics V90 external serial interface Fax Modem for the desktop with instant success.
The laptop has a soft modem and again I took the easy way out when I then remembered that I had a Xircom PCMCIA modem and Ethernet card. I plugged it in and it was recognised immediately and I had a telephone connect working a few minutes later during my initial LiveCD tests.
I have put this at the end as it males an interesting comparison of Linux and Windows XP on which to finish. The background is that I had to obtain a RS232 to USB converter because the new laptop has no serial connector and I needed to download and upload waypoints to my Garmin GPS. I did a bit of Googling and I chose a device which used a FTDI chip because I found their chips were supported in Linux - others may be but it seemed best to play safe.
It was purchased from Tronisoft for £11.42 ref 2446 as USB 2.0 - RS232 cable with 25 way adapter and delivered the following day. I spoke with them before ordering and they were very helpful but had no Linux machines so said they would be glad for feedback. The disk provided has drivers for Linux, Mac and Windows 98/2000 and XP. I thought it would make an interesting comparison so I kept notes.
Windows: I first tried to install under Windows XP by turning the machine on and then plugging in the cable - it detected new hardware and started the install wizard. It found the two drivers only when it could check the web. A small CD with drivers was also provided. Total time about 5 minutes and another 10 or so to connect my serial modem and check it worked. It installed it as Serial port 4. I repeated it on the laptop taking a bit less time although I had to change the allocated port (13 which was beyond what the GPS software could handle) by Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Handlers and Properties of the device -> Port Settings -> Advanced - fortunately ports 1 and 2 were free although all higher ports had been allocated already.
Ubuntu Linux: I plugged in the cable and nothing seemed to happen and I then had to find out a way of deciding if it had installed - which I did not really believe - it was too easy! I looked in the Device Manager and there was evidence that it had done something as there was new 8-bit FIFO so a quick look on the Internet provided a couple of commands which could be run to find out more namely lsusb and dmesg. The first produced a few lines which showed that the device had been identified and the second produced far more output, most of which I could not understand, but repeat runs with and without the device plugged in convinced me it was worth fetching my serial modem to use as a test. The output also indicated the device was detected as an FT232BM made by FTDI and installed as /dev/ttyUSB0 and watching the /dev directory showed it coming and going as one plugged in and out. The modem was also detected and I set up Networking to use ttyUSB0 and worked fine on a short trial. If I had been more confident and known where it would be installed it would have been easier and much quicker than Windows XP.
Although Ubuntu came out ahead for ease and speed I must admit that I had chosen a device with a FTDI chip knowing that they were more likely to be supported. Time was taken going up a learning curve as there was ten years to one week difference in experience, even so the complete investigations and trials on two machines to working solutions on both were completed in only just over an hour after delivery - this write up has taken longer!
Having had so much success, I spent some time working out how to install Ubuntu on my old but much loved Toshiba Portege 3440CT. It has been upgraded to a 30 Gbyte drive and 192 Mbytes of Ram with a 500 Mhz processor but it is below the recommended specifications. Despite that it ran the LiveCD at a reasonable speed especially after I had created a Linux Swap File - the LiveCd will use any Linux Swap files it locates - an undocumented facility.
When running the Live CD the first time I enabled a Swap partition and set it up after that it seemed to find it anyway.
fdisk -l # List all partitions - look for the one marked as a Linux Swap
sudo mkswap /dev/hdxn # Create swap file system on disk x partition n (deletes contents)
sudo swapon /dev/hdxn # Add to running system
sudo swapon -s # Make sure it is live
This makes the LiveCd run much faster ready for an install. When I came to the install it ran fast up to disk partitioning at which point it seemed to only used real memory and locked up.
So the procedure in detail was:
The first action was to make a disk partitioning plan. The drive has two partitions, one for the system and another for data. I increased the Windows system to 8 Gbytes has got increasingly greedy and was once more giving problems with space for system restores. I allocated 8 Gbytes for the Ubuntu Linux Root partition and another 500 Mbytes for a Swap partition which should be at least twice the size of the available memory. I used partition Magic but there are plenty of Open Source tools such as the LiveCD versions of GTparted. However do not make changes to Linux partitions with Partition Magic after initial creation - it screwed mine up so what follows is actually a second time through. I got everything going then used Partition Magic to refine the partition sizes and ended up with an unbootable system as it changed the type of the Linux partition. Next time I will use one of the Linux based LiveCD partition tools. I was very glad I had a Boot Floppy and a PCMCIA Floppy drive so I could do an fdisk /mbr to reset the Master Boot Record and get Windows back but faced many elapsed hours to reinstall.
I tried the LiveCd install several times but finally resorted to downloading the Alternative CD which needs less RAM for the installation. The 691 Mbytes took an hour and a half to download and another 30 minutes to turn the iso image onto a bootable CD using Nero although the Ubuntu site tells you about OpenSource software.
The install is very tedious as it is the interactive version for OEMs and asks many questions during the initial phase. The easiest way is to have a large empty space for partitioning and tell it to get on with it. I did it the hard way and regretted it as I had to stop to think many times. You need to have the root partition called just / on your new ext3 file system and the Swap on the Swap - it should find that. The processor and CD were very slow and the overall install time was about 105 minutes before the first boot. I immediately swapped to the WiFi card and set up the encryption and started to download about 175 Mbytes of updates. I achieve a steady 121 Kbytes/sec on my Tiscali broadband and the download took the time to 120 mins plus installing taking a further 15 minutes to install and reboot.
The first and major problem I came up with the first time was that when I undocked the machine from the CD dock all the drives changed so the Grub boot did not work - I edited the string in situ using the e option and then set it up for boots with and without the machine docked in /boot/grub/menu.lst having backed up the original by:
sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst_bak
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
WARNING: When you edit this file read about the Automagic set up options and make changes there as well otherwise when you next upgrade the kernel it will set back to the unbootable drive - this happened and for I while I thought I had lost the system until the penny dropped. A nasty feeling.
I also went into I modified the /etc/fstab file as follows:
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
where I modified the mount points for the various drives and Swap and commented out the CD drive and the Windows XP partition which I did not want mounted.
I then halted the machine, undocked and rebooted with the new settings. I checked using system monitor that Swap seemed to be working but rest it up above just in case although looked as if system had worked it out in the reboot.
I set up myself as user using System -> Administration -> Users and on the second tab to chose to be an administrator - essential to avoid lockout when oem is deleted and to be able to sudo. I again restarted to check all OK at 3 hour mark and hopefully where I would have been from a LiveCD install with updates.
I set up File sharing and printers as per the sections above.
I then started to load all the applications in the lists above having enabled some of the repositories and also used EasyUbuntu. I set up to use the Sun Java as above for Arachnophilia. I only left out the CD writer and Skype.
Once I had GNOME-PP loaded I checked for modems and both the internal soft modem and that on Xircom card worked although I had to do a dmesg to find out where they had been allocated. The Ethernet connection on the Xircom card did not work but a 3Com 3CRWE154G72 WiFi card had been immediately detected and only needed the WEP key set. Audio worked as soon as I remembered to turn up the volume on the physical volume control on the front of the laptop many months latter!
I tried it plugged into the simple port replicator rather than the dock with the CD reader and that did not seem to cause the change in drive designations and the ethernet port and extra USB port were recognised and worked - I assume that is the same for the PS1, serial and parallel ports. Hot docking did not seem to work. I have always avoided hibernating and suspending laptops and I can not vouch for whether that works.
At the end of the day I have a very useable slim line laptop with Ubuntu. It is a bit slow opening Open Office otherwise quite fast enough for normal use. It needed the modification to have bigger drive for dual booting but would have been usable with a full suite of software. In contrast a protected Windows XP will barely run on a 6 Gbyte Drive with a sensible set of software loaded. Booting time is 135 seconds to a useable desktop and shutdown is 47 seconds from the desktop. In contrast Windows XP with McAfee and Zonealarm took 320 seconds before I could open My Computer, over twice as long on the same machine. The shut down time is also close to twice as long at 92 seconds. Even more surprising was that my 2.5 Ghz desktop also took over 5 minutes to become usable at the start of the day, presumably because of checks and downloading software updates etc. With Ubuntu 6.04 being a Long Term version with 3 to 5 years support I hope to keep running till the machine finally dies rather than be forced into change by being microshafted by Bill!
I had problems when testing suspend and hibernate on the Portege which resulted in some very peculiar happenings and my having to recreate a swop file. The following terminal commands re-created the swap file.
fdisk -l # List all partitions - look for the one marked as a Linux Swap
sudo mkswap /dev/hdxn # Create swap file system on disk x partition n (deletes contents)
sudo swapon /dev/hdxn # Add to running system
sudo swapon -s # Make sure it is live
I therefore looked for a way to prevent them being activated. GNOME contains a database for storing your preferences called 'gconf, which is a similar database to the Windows registry. There is a Configuration Editor Program for Gnome which can be accessed via Applications -> System Tools -> Configuration Editor to easily make changes for the current user. To make global changes it is best called in a terminal by:
sudo gconf-editor
Navigate through the left hand tree to apps -> gnome-power-manager. Find the options named 'can_hibernate' and 'can_suspend' and uncheck them both.
Right-click on each in turn and click Set as Mandatory to make sure that it applies to all users then exit the Configuration Editor. Changes will not appear until after a reboot.
I hope that this page has persuaded you that Linux is now a real alternative to Windows - a desirable and arguably essential change if you are going to use use a laptop 'mobile'. Try out Ubuntu Linux with a LiveCD, there is little to lose. It may even work on a machine which no longer runs Windows effectively as long as you can fit 192 Mbytes memory and preferably 256Mbytes.
Even if you do not change immediately there are some things you can do which will make both your existing computing safer and the transition easier. Avoiding the use of Outlook Express and Internet Explorer and the replacement of a USB ADSL modem by a ADSL/Firewall/Router reduces risks by 4 fold even with good security software. So my beliefs and recommendations are:
The following tables show how Ubuntu Dapper Drake matches up to Microsoft Windows XP for normal applications and utilisation on a desktop and for Mobile use on a Laptop. The sections on the darker background are those which are desirable or essential somewhere on our machines especially on the 'Power User' desktop which have not or can not be met using Linux. It looks as if we will only need to keep one dual boot system at home and probably keep the laptop as a dual boot because we have a TV dongle for boating in the UK. The optimum system configuration of our machines will be addressed when we have gained a little more experience and investigated Linux networking more fully but we are now committed to Linux almost certainly Ubuntu, whilst on the move,and very much more open source software everywhere. It has been a fascinating and enlightening investigation. The bottom line is that after a week I rarely switched back to Windows but the final step will be to convert Pauline which may need a new laptop for her!
Hardware Support |
||||
| Hardware | Windows XP | Score 0-10 |
Ubuntu Linux | Score 0-10 |
| CD and DVD writers | Plug and Play | 10 | Plug and Play | 10 |
| Ethernet cards Desktop and Laptop |
Plug and Play | 10 | Plug and Play plus activation in Networking | 9 |
| Internal WiFi Card (Laptop) | Drivers installed WEP Code setting easy |
9 | Installed automatically WEP Code setting easy in Networking |
9 |
| Xircom PCMCIA Modem (laptop) | Not required as internal modem (Plug and Play without driver) |
10 | Plug and Play Port can be automatically identified in Networking |
9 |
| US Robotics External Serial Modem (Desktop) | Plug and Play without driver loading | 10 | Plug and Play Port can be automatically identified in Networking |
9 |
| USB 2.0 Hub | Plug and Play without driver loading | 10 | Plug and Play Links appear on desktop |
10 |
| USB Disk Drive (250 Gbyte with FAT32 and NTFS partitions) | Plug and Play without driver loading | 10 | Plug and Play - Links appears on desktop |
10 |
| USB - SD card reader | Plug and Play without driver loading | 10 | Plug and Play Links appears on desktop |
10 |
| USB Multi-Card Reader | Plug and Play without driver loading | 10 | Plug and Play Links appears on desktop when cards inserted |
10 |
| USB Bluetooth Dongle | Software suite has to be installed plus some configuration | 7 | Detected but some configuration in system files needed. Some utilities available. Two Dongles tried. | 6 |
| USB Floppy | Plug and Play | 10 | Plug and Play Link appears on desktop |
10 |
| PCMCIA Compact Flash Converter | Plug and Play | 10 | Plug and Play but device needs to be added to pmount.allow and it then appears in /media | 9 |
| Vodafone Connect Card | Install CD provided by Vodafone | 9 | Plug and Play Installed as two USB ports Accessible via GNOME-PPP |
8 |
| Internal Modem (laptop) Soft HSF type modem by ATI based on Conexant Chip. |
Pre-installed | 9 | Very easy if you pay the licence fee of $19.99 or accept restrictions to 14 kbaud. | 5 |
| WiFi Card (Desktop) Belkin PCI |
Install Proprietary Software | 6 | Identified but full driver not loaded as it has proprietary parts. I have had it working but not with WEP | 1 |
| PCI WinModem Card (Desktop) | Had to Search out and Install Proprietary Drivers | 5 | May be possible but very difficult - not followed up as external serial modem available. | ? |
| Pinnacle Firewire DV In/Out and Analog Video Input | Install Proprietary Software | 6 | Not checked yet but may be possible to use the FireWire inputs | ? |
| Pinnacle USB TV Tuner | Install Proprietary Software | 6 | Not possible | No |
I would be very pleased if visitors could spare a little time to give me some feedback - it is the only way I know who has visited, if it is useful and how I should develop it's content and the techniques used. I would be delighted if you could send comments or just let me know you have visited by sending a quick Message to me.
Ubuntu Linux - Introduction | LiveCD Trials and Installing | Multiple Booting and Grub | Networking | Applications | Media | Email and Contacts - transfers | IMAP v POP and Software considerations| WINE | Encryption | Web Authoring | Simple Backup| Hardware Support |A Legacy Laptop - Toshiba Portege 3440 | Disabling Suspend and Hibernate | Looking Forwards | Hardware Support Table | Software Requirements Table | Reader Feedback || Ubuntu Linux on the Move | Communications Requirements Table || Ubuntu Linux on the Take (Photo Support) || Open Source, Free and Cross-Platform Software
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| Copyright © Peter and Pauline Curtis Content revised: 21st October, 2007 |