In order to test the theory, I installed WICD instead, as I have in the past, and once again WICD fixed the problem. I’m not sure why the WICD team just seem to be able to get wireless to work where Network Manager boys persistently struggle, and WICD lacks the additional functionality of 3G connection management, but it just bloody works and that’s the most important feature of a connection manager.

I’ve been using WICD on and off for some time, and I’m impressed with the speed it has developed. It also looks a lot slicker than it did in the early days, something that has not gone unnoticed in the Ubuntu camp as it’s now available in the repositories. One command,

sudo apt-get install wicd

now ditches Network Manager and installs WICD. If you’re having problems with the AR5008 in Ubuntu, it’s well worth a try.

So what? – we have bash – and after a bit of digging around this morning and combining a few bits and pieces this is my version for Ubuntu

Firstly, in order to run firefox full screen we need the AutoHide plugin, which appears to have been written by someone with an interesting sense of humour.

Secondly, a small alteration needs to be made to the  javascript prefs file (.mozilla/firefox/$profile/prefs.js, $profile = your profile). THIS MUST BE DONE WITH THE BROWSER CLOSED as Firefox overwrites the file on shutdown. Add these two lines at the end of the file:

user_pref("browser.link.open_external", 1);
user_pref("browser.link.open_newwindow", 1);

Now that’s done there’s just a little bash script. Feel free to hack but if you improve it please let me know! I just saved the following few lines as a file “Webscreen” in my home directory:

#!/bin/bash

remoteclient=$(find /usr/lib/ -type f -name mozilla-xremote-client | grep -m 1 xulrunner)

if [ `ps -e | grep firefox | wc -l` -eq 0 ]; then

    /usr/bin/firefox -fullscreen &
    sleep 5

fi

while [ `ps -e | grep firefox | wc -l` -gt 0 ]; do

    urls=$(cat /home/huff/Desktop/pages)

    for i in $urls
        do
        $remoteclient -a firefox "openurl($i)"

        if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
            echo "Firefox not running or ignoring me, bailing out...."
            killall firefox
            exit 0
        fi
        sleep 15
        done
done
exit 0

Note the path to the mozilla-xremote-client – this is correct on Ubuntu Jaunty but I had to use find to well, you know, find it:

find /usr/lib -iname \*mozilla-xremote\*

As can be seen the script takes the pages you want to cycle through from a text file called (I felt quite pleased with this) “pages” on the Desktop, one url on each line such as:

and scrolls through the selection every 15 seconds.

The last detail is to

chmod +x ~/Webscreen


and add a Custom Application Launcher to the panel. Thanks to mozilla for continuing the command line options started by Netscape and the cool AutoHide plugin, this was pretty easy. Hope it helps someone.

As a long-time (since Gutsy) follower of Ubuntu bug 99508, the one about the badly drawn window decoration (see right), I was thrilled to see that Nvidia’s 180 Beta driver fixed the problem. The driver is packaged up and available in the alpha of Jaunty’s next release, 9.04. However, running the alpha as your main OS is folly, not to mention a pain in the butt if you just want to get something done and it’s a bit broken at that moment.

One can always install nvidia’s driver from a shell using the installer provided, but I’m always happier using a .deb, and luckily the 180 debs are coming to Intrepid’s backports. Just not yet. So if you want to try the 180 driver, you can use the Jaunty .debs.

I’ve tested it on my laptop under Intrepid, with its integral Nvidia 6100 Go chipset, and it works very well. Some Jaunty testers have reported increased temperatures and odd black spots, but all is ok here. In fact I ran a full screen video on each desktop under compiz (left) without issue.
The debs are available from the Jaunty repos, and the packages required are nvidia-glx-180 and nvidia-180-kernel-source. At present, these contain the 180.11 beta driver – there is a newer one available from nvidia and no doubt the packages in the Jaunty repos will be updated shortly. Once downloaded, a few commands (i386 users will need to alter the architecture part of the filename):

sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx-177
cd Desktop (if this is where the debs are)
sudo dpkg -i nvidia-180-kernel-source_180.11-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i nvidia-glx-180_180.11-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb


And a reboot and (fingers x!) you’re done

Some significant changes have been happening to the X server over the past couple of releases of Ubuntu. One of the most noticeable alterations has been the removal of the xorg.conf file from the default Ubuntu install (edit – it was removed during the development cycle but reappeared in the release version).

It is a great thing that X is now at the stage where it knows devices well enough to configure them with no user input, but occasionally a device may be incorrectly set up, or one may want to customise beyond default settings.

Such is the case with my synaptics touchpad. I really like the fact that in Linux I can configure the touchpad to trigger a middle mouse button event when it is tapped with 3 fingers. Left click – one finger, right click – two fingers, middle click – three fingers. In addition, I want to be able to disable the touchpad while typing.

In the past, disabling the touchpad temporarily when the keyboard is in use was done by adding a line:

SHMConfig On

to the synaptics device section of the xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf), and running the command:

syndaemon -i 0.7 -m 50 -d

at the start of every session (best done by adding it to System>Preferences>Sessions as a new startup program). Things are done slightly differently now, and there is no need to add the line to xorg.conf. Or at least there isn’t if you use the synaptics driver provided by Ubuntu developer William Grant on this forum thread, .deb available here.

You may have to remove the existing driver first:

sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

I had to lock the version to prevent the default Intrepid driver appearing as an update. This can easily be done in Synaptic Package Manager, by searching for synaptics, highlighting the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package and selecting Package>Lock Version. Now after restarting the X server (Ctrl, Alt and Backspace) and issuing the syndaemon command, the touchpad should be disabled when typing without having to enable SHMConfig.

In order to adjust the various custom settings for the  synaptics touchpad, one can enter a section in xorg.conf. One also needs a ServerLayout section, similar to the one below.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "LeftEdge" "1900"
Option "RightEdge" "5000"
Option "TopEdge" "1400"
Option "BottomEdge" "4500"
Option "FingerLow" "25"
Option "FingerHigh" "35"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "MaxTapMove" "220"
Option "ClickTime" "0"
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "45"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "45"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.08"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.60"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.003"
Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200"
Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "3"
Option "TapButton3" "2"
EndSection


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Inputdevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection


However, I switched to 64bit Linux some time ago now. After emailing OpenText to see if they will be compiling a 64 bit version and receiving a positive negative, I’ve discovered a quick and simple way to get it working without leaving a mess of libraries.

The only problem (at least on Ubuntu 8.04) seems to be the Qt libraries. Luckily FirstClass doesn’t just look in /usr/lib/ for these, it also has a nose around /usr/lib32 (a directory that appears automatically in Ubuntu 64 bit after installing Flash player, the only other 32bit app I use). If it isn’t there, simply:

sudo mkdir /usr/lib32

Next we need the .deb package for the 32bit libqtmt libraries. Head over to http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/i386/libqt3-mt/download and choose a mirror, saving the deb somewhere obvious, Desktop will do. Using Archive Manager instead of Gdebi package installer, crack open the deb and navigate through the data folder to the lib folder. Drag and drop the lib folder on your desktop (this should extract it) and issue:

sudo cp -R /home/$your_username/Desktop/lib/* /usr/lib32/

That’s it! FirstClass still bitches a little when you fire it up from the terminal, but seems to work flawlessly inspite of that. Pity it’s such an ugly resource hog, but you can’t have everything.

I’ll begin at the noisy end. The Sennheisers are simply a great pair of headphones. The Sony MBR 100 was a free gift with my mobile phone which I initially dismissed as a gimmick. I mean, who honestly uses their phone as an MP3 player? However, quite separately I discovered that my new phone connects far better to Ubuntu over bluetooth than with the USB cable, so I bought a cheap dongle and indeed, after some futzing around it connects very well. It subsequently occurred to me that I may be able to press that gimmick into service around the home.

Here’s the tricky bit. I figured that connecting the MBR-100 to my laptop was going to prove a bit of a pain, and indeed the initial pairing with the device was the stumbling block. Normally pairing can be achieved by right-clicking on the bluetooth icon in the system tray, but it doesn’t seem to work with the MBR-100. I managed to overcome the difficulty by doing the following:

Install the old btsco module:

sudo apt-get install bluez-btsco

Load the module:

sudo modprobe snd-bt-sco

get the address of the MBR-100 using hcitool:

hcitool scan

At this point the MBR-100 needs to be allowing pairing. Turn off, then on again until the LED flashes green/red/green/red etc. Now we can attempt connection:

sudo btsco -v aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff

Where aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff is the address of the device as revealed by the scan. The bluetooth symbol in the system tray should now spit out a dialogue about entering a passcode – click and enter the default pairing number, on mine it is 0000.

If you’ve got this far then the rest should be a doddle. If not, it may be of use to restart bluetooth services and try again:

sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

Once paired, the MBR-100 doesn’t appear to need the snd-bt-sco module any longer, and will accept broadcast audio from my laptop without any extra intervention even after a restart. There are two things remaining to do. First we need to create a config file for alsa (advanced linux sound architecture if you were wondering!):

cd
gedit ~/.asoundrc

Copy this into the file:

pcm.bluetooth {
type bluetooth
device aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff
}

replacing aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff as before with the address of the MBR-100. We need to restart alsa now:

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

In Amarok we can browse to (hey a GUI at last ) Settings > Configure Amarok > Engine then, selecting alsa as our output plugin and by hitting “Apply”, we can type bluetooth in the stereo box, apply again and that’s it. Play a song!

More info at the bluez wiki.

Step forward the rt73 legacy driver….

This “legacy” driver is still supported by Serialmonkey, as I myself witnessed when I found the module no longer compiled on Intrepid’s kernel. Vern, one of the developers, fixed the issue and the module now compiles without complaints. I was approached on the forum by someone wanting to know how to go about using this older module so I thought I’d write a quick how to. There is one already on the ubuntu forums, but it is a little dated and doesn’t include details about WICD.

First the bad news. The legacy driver doesn’t work with network-manager. This is more of a shame now network manager has actually started to justify its extra cpu usage, with decent support for mobile network connections, but there are ways to configure and use those without it.

The howto:

First download the tar.gz file for the rt73 driver (you can find it on the downloads page of the rt2x00 site).

Next download WICD. There is a .deb available. I can’t get version 1.5.3 to work, but others have not had problems. There’s probably a .deb of version 1.4.x floating around the net, if not I have one somewhere (update: here). I personally have to alter the file /opt/wicd/networking.py in version 1.4.2 to get it to work (I comment out line 365 which puts the interface down), but again no-one else seems to suffer with this glitch. You can add wicd to your sources list – I don’t just in case I lose connection and can’t download it when network-manager is removed:

sudo apt-get remove network-manager network-manager-gnome

Next you need to blacklist the existing ralink drivers that Intrepid uses. Edit the file:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and add these lines:

#Ralink, we're using the legacy driver now
blacklist rt73usb
blacklist rt2x00usb
blacklist rt2500usb
blacklist rt2x00lib

then remove the modules as they’ll currently be loaded into the kernel:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down

(I’m guessing your wireless interface is wlan0 – you need to put it down first or the kernel won’t let you unload the module. You can find out for sure what it is called using ifconfig -a)

sudo modprobe -r rt73usb
sudo modprobe -r rt2500usb
sudo modprobe -r rt2x00usb

Okay now we can compile the module. cd to the directory containing the driver you downloaded. Then:

tar -xvzf rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz
cd rt73-cvs-THE_TIMESTAMP/Module/
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe -v rt73

..where THE_TIMESTAMP is the date part of the extracted directory. Then:

ifconfig -a

to find out the name of the interface (probably wlan0)

install and open up WICD and open the preferences. Select “ralink legacy” and type in the interface name in the “wireless interface” box.

Then you should be able to “refresh” and see your network. Add the encryption key if needed and connect.

Remember if it all goes wrong you’ll need to reinstall network manager (try rebooting first!)

sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

and comment out the lines you added to /etc/modprobe/blacklist (In fact if you’ve successfully loaded the rt73 driver you’ll need to blacklist that instead of the others: blacklist rt73 – in order for it not to conflict with the default Intrepid modules.)