Fix Wifi under Ubuntu on Dell Inspiron 1501

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Just installed Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot on a friend’s computer today.  It’s pretty old, a Dell Inspiron 1501.  It may be dated, but I thought I’d post the solution to a pretty significant problem I encountered while getting everything working.

Fixing the WiFi under Ubuntu on the Dell Inspiron 1501

When I first installed it, everything worked except the WiFi.  This is obviously very bad.  The menu showed that the WiFi firmware was missing.  I tried installing the proprietary Broadcom codec with Additional Drivers, but it only made WiFi disappear from the system entirely.  A bunch of research lead me to this simple solution:

~$ sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

I was shocked too. Hours of research and messing with ndiswrapper, and the solution was as simple as installing a package.  By the way, as the name of the package suggests, this applies to any computer with a Broadcom BCM43** WiFi device, not just the Latitude 1501.

Diaspora!

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Finally, after about a year of waiting, I received a Diaspora invitation. These are some of my impressions.

No Ads

No advertisement crap, just pure social-network goodness. Now, I use Adblock Plus on Facebook, but Diaspora doesn’t have an empty space where the ads used to be.

Easy

I am truly blown away by the simplicity of the interface. I thought Facebook was pretty simple, but this is worlds beyond Facebook. Everything is so simple and intuitive. There’s notifications at the top, a little menu for settings, all the settings in an easy format. No non-intuitive, quirky little things that don’t make sense.

Privacy

Everything by default is utterly private. Nothing is visible unless you explicitly set is as such.

Appearance

The interface is very good looking and easy on the eyes. I see Google+ borrowed a lot of the style, including the black top-bar. The highest form of flattery, as they say.

Functionality

Behavior-wise, it seems like Facebook + Twitter + Awesomeness. There is your “stream”, which contains posts with all the tags you follow. Then are your “aspects”, which are the precursors to Google+’s “circles”. Simply many-to-many groups of friends that you can sort any way you like. I spend much more time in my aspects than my stream.

Laggy

Often the site is a bit laggy, especially AJAX calls. This is because it’s still a work-in-progress, and they are doing some major scaling right now. Donate!

 Conclusion

It’s not quite ready for the masses, but that’s only because of their limited resources.  As for the software, I really am impressed.  Can’t wait to see where this goes.

Migrating from Evolution to Thunderbird in Ubuntu Oneiric

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With the advent of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot has come the reintroduction of Thunderbird as the default mail client in Ubuntu.  If you wish to make the transition (as I do, I prefer Thunderbird over Evolution), you need to know how to migrate/import your email.  Almost all of the instructions I found on the internet are from 2007 and are obsolete.  The most updated instructions are (of course), here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_and_exporting_your_mail

You can’t just copy files over like you could in the old days.  Now, there is a three (or four) step process.

Account Setup

Sorry, you have to re-configure the accounts yourself.  Go to Edit > Account Settings…, and create your email account(s).

Contact Import

Click the Contacts button in Evolution, and click File > Save Address Book as vCard.  Save it to a convenient place, then switch over to Thunderbird.  Select Tools > Import…, select the Address Books option, click Next, select vCard, click Next, and select the file you saved in Evolution.

Email Import

This part’s a bit tricky.  The deal is, you can only transfer one folder at a time.  I don’t mean one tree-top, I mean one folder in the hierarchy.  This is fine if you don’t have too many folders (Inbox, Sent, Trash, etc.).  It will be a bit more time-consuming if you have created more organizational folders.

Go back to Evolution, select a folder, and select all emails in that folder.  Select File > Save As mbox….  For the name of the file to save, enter the name of the folder you’re exporting at the moment.  Do this for every single folder and sub-folder.

When you finish, go back to Thunderbird.  Install the ImportExportTools addon, and restart Thunderbird.  Right-click on your email account, and click Import/Export > Import mbox file.  Select the second radio button, click OK, and choose a (top-level) file you exported from Evolution.  Voilà!  Your email folder appears.  It may not be where you want it to be though.  Drag stuff around until it’s the way you want it.  The folder will be placed inside of the folder you selected when you chose to import the mbox file.

Calendar

What’s that?  Thunderbird doesn’t have a calendar?  No, but there is an excellent addon that gives you that.  It’s called Lightning.  Install it from the addon manager.  In Evolution, right-click on a calendar and select Save As.  Save in a convenient location as a .ics file.  In Thunderbird, select Events and Tasks > Import…, and choose the calendar you exported from Evolution.  For info on setting up Google Calendars, see this forum thread.

Finito!

You’re welcome.  Please link to this post!

Problems?  Comments?  There is a place for that below.

Ubuntu on the HP Dm1z: Updates

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See my other post on Oneiric on the Dm1z first

Now that Ubuntu Oneiric Oncelot 11.10 has been officially released, I thought I’d post on on my experiences with it once again.

The first thing I have to say is this: don’t update, reinstall.  Seriously, I went for about a week after the official released and did plenty of updates, and almost all of the problems I described in my last post persisted.  After a reinstall, everything disappeared.

I didn’t initially intend to reinstall.  In fact, I completely broke the system trying to install some ATI drivers (protip: don’t install any display drivers).  I downloaded 11.10 from the site, and installed it.  Bam!  All the problems I had disappeared: random suspend failure, random freezing, WiFi not re-enabling properly, graphics working, sound un-muting, brightness issues.

So lets get started, shall we?

Installation

To install the system, just download it from the site and do it as you normally would.  For dealing with partitions, see my last post.

Configuration

  1. Install Gnome Shell.  Go to the software center, and search for “gnome shell”.  Install it, logout, and re-login with the “Gnome” desktop environment, instead of the “Ubuntu” desktop environment.  Woop, Gnome Shell just like that!  I must say, I am very impressed with the Gnome devs’ work.  Shell is much snappier and responsive than Unity.
  2. Improve the touchpad.  Because Ubuntu apparently treats my touchpad as not having a right-click button (only two-finger tap works, just like OS X), I figured I’d conform all of the other setting. Open up the mouse settings, and go to the Trackpad tab.  You can do as you like, but I like to disable the touchpad while typing, scroll with two fingers, and enable horizontal scrolling.  Turn down the sensitivity too, and turn up the acceleration.  Acceleration is great feature.  To reverse the direction of scrolling like in OS X Lion, create a file called .Xmodmapin your home folder, and put this in: 
    pointer = 1 2 3 5 4 7 6 8 9 10 11 12
  3. Play with the clock.  Open up the clock settings and do what you like with it.  I have everything shown, from the date, to the day of the week, to the second.
  4. Hide the Universal Access tray icon.  Follow the instructions here: Disable the Universal Access accessibility menu in Gnome 3.
  5. Install the Elementary theme.  In my opinion, Elementary is the best theme for Gnome Shell out there.  Visit this page and follow the instructions for installing gnome-tweak-tool and gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme.  After doing that, download the theme, and install it with gnome-tweak-tool (Advanced Settings in the applications menu).

How’s it working for you?  Tell me in the comments.

Piwik Analytics

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I know a lot of people use Google Analytics for hit tracking.  But I feel like I already give Google enough data.  I’m not too fond of the idea of telling them when people visit my website.  But, I still want a quality hit tracking application.

Enter Piwik.  Piwik is an open-source PHP-based analytics program.  It is very well made: it’s easy to install, it works well, it’s easy to use, and it looks good.  Just download it from the site, unzip, upload to your site, run the install process, and drop the tracking code into your page(s).

Setup

The ease of installation is on par with WordPress.  Seriously, it’s easier.  Just tell it a bit about your site, and create your account.  You can organize tracking by “Websites”.  Create a “Website”, add domains that can register hits in it, and place the tracking code.  You can have multiple Websites per domain, and multiple domains per Website.  It just depends on how you place the tracking code.

Not only can you track with either Javascript or an <img> tag, but there is also an API that allows you to register hits any way you want.

WordPress

Before discovering Piwik, I was using SlimStats (which I highly recommend if you just need WordPress analytics).  But it meant that I had to check there and in Piwik.  Fortunately, there is a lovely WordPress plugin aptly named Piwik Analytics.  Simply tell it where you have Piwik installed, and the ID of the site to register hits with.  Bam, it will work instantly.  Watch out though: if it looks like it’s not working, you probably need to logout.  By default, it won’t register administrators.  Be sure to rate it!

That’s all, folks!

Enjoy using Piwik.

http://piwik.org/

Ubuntu on the HP Dm1z

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As stated in my last post, I just got the HP Pavilion Dm1z. Being a Linux guy, I naturally took it upon myself to install Ubuntu. Here is some information about my experience, concerning hardware compatibility and other things.

The most important point is that WiFi doesn’t work on 11.04 Natty or below. For WiFi to work, you need a newer kernel, and that means Oneiric. Oneiric is has not been officially released, and is still unstable. But you can still upgrade to it.

To get Oneiric, install Natty as you normally would, either with an external CD drive or bootable thumb drive. Because all four primary partitions are already taken by a bunch of junk, it’s a little more complicated than it should be. Manually copy the contents of HP_TOOLS to else, and delete it. That will free up a space in the partition table, but you still need space. Resize the Windows partition and then create a new partition for root (/). The rest of the installation process is pretty standard.

When you’re finished installing, press Alt+F2 and run update-manager -d. That will bring up the Update Manager application, asking if you want to upgrade to Oneiric.

Before you do that, I should probably warn you about the problems I’ve encountered with Oneiric.

  • No suspend/hibernate. It’s a major bummer, but if you’re not using it, you’ve got to shut it down. If you try to suspend or hibernate it, it will just get stuck and never actually go to sleep/hibernate. It’s not too bad though, it boots up in about 30 seconds. Update: it seems the latest updates have fixed suspend, but hibernate is still broken.
  • Sound upmutes on startup. This may not seem like a big deal until you turn on your computer in the middle of class and the speakers are blaring the startup sound. Have your fingers ready to hit Fn+F11 quick, or disable the startup sound.  The good news is that there is a solution.
  • Random freezing. Every little while, the screen will just freeze. No amount of Ctrl+Alt+Del will help. A forced shutdown is necessary. It doesn’t happen too often thought.
  • Wonky brightness. If you turn down the brightness and then it sits for a moment, it will bright back up if you press a key. The settings don’t really work. I’m sure this issue will be resolved when it’s stable though.  Update: again, the latest updates have fixed this problem.

Other than those issues, hardware compatibility is excellent. Webcam just works. All hardware indicators, including sound and WiFi work perfectly. In fact, Ubuntu does something that even Windows does: it turns on the “muted” indicator light when you plug in headphones. The trackpad is pretty snazzy too. Two finger scrolling, no right-click (two-finger tap for context menu), multitouch zoom. Not as good as a MacBook obviously, but it’s the best I’ve seen on a PC.

If you can’t handle the problems above, I’d stick with Windows until Oneiric becomes stable. If you can, plug in an Ethernet cable and click the Upgrade button. Part-way though the upgrade process, the WiFi will suddenly start working without warning.

Getting the graphics working is easy.  Just open up Additional Drivers, and enable the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver.  It should require a restart.

How’s it working for you?  Tell me in the comments.

See my new post since the official release

The HP Dm1z

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My dad just bought me the HP Dm1z.  This is one of those products that appear every once in a while that really stand out.  It’s quite powerful, small, light, well designed, and reasonably priced.  I did a lot of research, and this notebook was the conclusion of that research.

First, the price.  You can order your own from HP’s website for about $400, which is a great deal for a computer like this compared to competing products.

The size is perfect in many ways.  I don’t want the constraints of a netbook, but I don’t want a giant computer that’s hard to carry around.  The Dm1z fits the bill perfectly, and is under an inch thick.  The screen is 1366 x 768, so the pixels are very small, making it easy on the eyes.  The viewing angle is excellent as well.

The performance is amazing for a computer of this size.  No, this isn’t another Atom netbook.  This puppy is running the AMD E-300 “Bulldozer” architecture.  Things that would really slow down an Atom or even Mobile Pentium are no problem for this machine.  Graphics are AMD Radeon HD 6310M, advertised as “discrete class”.   To top it off, it stays very cool.  A great feature of this notebook is that there are no vents on the bottom.  This means you can have it comfortably in your lap without any problems at all.

The keyboard is one of the best I’ve ever seen, laptop or otherwise.  It’s almost a pleasure to type on; the travel is perfect, and it’s 98% of a full-size keyboard, so spacing is very natural.  Keys aren’t in any weird places.  My only complaint is that sometimes you have to touch the keys a tad harder than you’d expect; but it’s no big deal.

The 6-cell battery is advertised as being good for 9 hours.  This would happen if you had the brightness turned all the way down and the WiFi turned off.  It’s still great though.  I can use it throughout the day and never have to worry about power issues.

The multitouch touchpad is very nice, in fact the nicest I’ve seen on a PC (not nearly as good as a Macbook though).  The advanced Synaptics settings are great and very flexible.  If you run Windows, I hear there’s a mod for it that improves some things.

Overall, the build feels good.  The screen isn’t flimsy, and it feels nice and rigid.  The plastic feels a bit cheap in some places, but not much.  Can’t expect too much from a $400 notebook with this great of specs.

If you’re in school, or just need a small notebook with you, I highly recommend this notebook.

The harddrive in mine is 320GB, which leaves plenty of room to dual-boot.  I’ll post later about getting Ubuntu onto this puppy.

Fix Firefox Backspace

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I installed Firefox Nightly 9.0 on my new HP Dm1z (I’ll post about it later), and found that the backspace key wasn’t going back one page. It seems that you need to change a setting in about:config to fix it. Open a new tab, and type about:config into the address bar.  Click through the warning, and filter for browser.backspace_action. For me, it’s set to 2. Set it to 0.

Try it, backspace should function now.

Tracing a QR Code/Barcode in Inkscape

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One really cool feature in Inkscape is bitmap tracing.  It works best on simple graphics because of the fact that simple raster graphics translate to vector much better.  In my case, I needed to trace a QR Code to send to a professional printer.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with QR Codes, it’s a 2-dimensional matrix barcode that can be printed on a physical medium and scanned with a smart-phone.  Here’s an example:

That’s actually my vCard; you can scan it right there on your screen and get my information.  There are plenty of sites out there that generate these.  I generated mine here:

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Another great one is here:

http://qrcode.littleidiot.be/

That one can actually output in SVG format by itself, rendering this technique useless for codes generated there.  The reason I don’t just use it is that it doesn’t (yet) support multi-line text, which is required for vCards.

To start, import a bitmap (preferably a non-lossy format like PNG) using either File > Import or dragging the image onto the document.  Open Path > Trace Bitmap…, and set all the settings on the first tab to look like this:

We want to make it trace brightness differences, with a very small threshold (the threshold between black and white is very large).  Uncheck Smooth, and remove the background.  Next, flip over to the Options tab, and uncheck Smooth corners.  You want it to keep the corners square, otherwise it will mess it up.

That’s it, just click OK.  You should have a lovely QR Code in vector format.