Getting Stuff to Work with Ubuntu
[I am still working on this post....]
This weekend I have been Ubuntu-ing up lots of the computers in my house.
For those that dont know Ubuntu is an operating system you can use instead of Windows. Its free, and its good stuff. Its based on Linux, but luclky, its easy to use and there is lots of help on how to use in on the web.
The reason I started this was because I came across a new way to install Ubuntu. Typciall, to install Ubuntu you download and burn the CD, pop it in the CD drive of your computer and reboot. Your machine will boot off of the CD straigt in to Ubuntu without making any chances to your hard disk. This lets you check it out and see what you think prior to installing. Once you have decided that you like it, you hit the install button, it asks you a few questions and the installs to your disk. While Ubuntu “plays nice” with the install of windows that you have on your dirve, it does take over to some extent. When you stasrt your computer up, the first thing that youw will see is a boot loader screen asking if you want to run Ubuntu or Windows. This screen is created by Ubuntu, so as you may be able to guess, Windows starts to play second fiddle on the computer. This isnt a problem, but if you run in to problems with Ubuntu that you may have trouble sorting out, you cant rely on your trusty old install of windows. This is what has put me off installing it on most of my comptuers. That was beofre I discovered “Wubi”.
Wubi is a program that lets you istall Ubuntu in sucha way that it wont distrub or upset Windows. After it is instlled, when you start yoru computer, you are greeded with the usual Windows XP boot laoder with two options:
Windows XP
Ubuntu
This works a treat. So far I have installed it on the latop that we use in the bedroom and on the tablet PC in the lounge. Some stuff works great straigt away (like the special stilus that the tabplet PC uses, much to my suppirse) and some stuff requires tweaking to get it to work (i.e. all of my Buffalo wireles cards)
The reason for this post is that I have worked out how to get a lot of stuff working this weeked and I feel I should write it down to use for refrence at a later date, if it turns out that this is usfeull to anyone else, brill.
Tip 1
My Bufflo wirelss cards in the did not work straigt away. But after a bit of searching, I came across this how to on the ever brilliant Ubuntu froum,
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185174
My card is a Buffalo WLI-CB-G54S but this will work for any card with a broadcomm chipset. Bascially, if you have a broadcomm card, chuck this in to your terminal
sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter
tip 2
Getting Ubuntu to work on a Tablet PC.
There are quite a few percularities of the tablet PC. It has a stylus (a radio pen type thing) to use instead of a mouse, the screen needs to be able to swtich from protrait to landscape and so on. As I stated earlytr, the stylus worked straigt away, although I am still unable to get the right click button to work as it should.
Getting the screen to rotate from portrait to landscape was easy, type this in to a terminal screen:
for portrait: xrandr -o left
and back to landscape: xrandr -o normal
once you have rotated the screen, you need to tell the stylus to roate also (otherwise when you move the pen up, the pointer goes left), for that:
portrait: xsetwacom set "stylus" Rotate 2
and back to landscape: xsetwacom set "stylus" Rotate 0
This article covers this and lots more in greater detail: http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1012
Getting the righit click buttonon the stylus to work
While the “pen” did work straight away, the right click button (the little button on the side of the pen that you press in when you want to do a right click) did not funciton as it should. This is because the default button map (what button does what funtion) was wrong. To fix this you have to use a little command line program calld “xsetwacom”
To get the right click to work enter:
sudo xsetwacom set stylus Button3 "button 3"
if ever a normal click starts to go funny, you can fix it with this command:
sudo xsetwacom set stylus Button2 "button 1"
bear in mind that this is on my tablet PC, which is a HP TC1100, the button mapping may be diferent on yours so you will have to have a play to see what works for you.
Tip 3
Ubuntu has a built in password manager which keeps you paswords all encrypted with a master password that you set yourself. This inludes the passwordds for any wireless networks that you connect to. This means that when you swtich the computer on it will ask you for your master password before it will connect ot thenetwork. This is a bit of pain and can be fixed by reading this article:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=192281Labels: geek
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