Easy Upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat on Acer Aspire One AO532-2326

Yesterday I took the plunge and upgraded may Acer Aspire One Netbook, which is the AO532-2326 model to Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.   I used the update manager to perform the upgrade and every thing went  fine.  The new Unity desktop is really sharp compared to the desktop that came with Ubuntu Linux 10.04.

The upgrade went fine by opening a terminal and running update-manager -d.

The mousepad  still does not quite work right.  The mouse stays active while you type, causing inadvertent mouse clicks while typing.  To get around this I use the Function-F7 key to enable and disable the mouse whenever I am typing in a window. I do not have this problem if I use the Windows 7 OS that is also installed on this netbook.

Another small change is that you may want to use the new Ubuntu fonts that come with Maverick Meerkat.    These can be enabled in the desktop appearances section.

Install of Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04 on Acer Aspire One 532h

I took the plunge and decided to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my little Acer Aspire One 532 H. Most everything is working OK, except there are some mouse/touhpad issues that are fairly well documented. It seems that the suspend while typing function on the touchpad is not working properly. The workaround is to use Fn-F7 to disable the touchpad manually if you want to get down to some serious typing. The multi-touch features and the scrollbar is also not working either. Searching around the forums, there seems to be some intricate solutions around, but maybe I will just wait for it to get into a release.

The install went smoothly and only took about 15 minutes. I decided to keep Windows 7 and dual boot into Ubuntu. The only change from the default install that I made was to make the Ubuntu partition a little larger then the Windows 7 partition. Windows 7 is OK, but the pre-installed antivirus software annoyed me when it asked to me to re-boot my computer, right when I was on a roll in getting some real work done. This is just the sort of thing that always irked me when using Windows in the past, when third party software wants to reboot your machine, while you are in the middle of getting some work done. So, now Windows 7 is treading on thin ice and may still yet get wiped off this little netbook.

Everything else seems to be working OK. There is a known SD card issue, and I have not tried out the microphone. That should be an issue too. The sleep works fine while depressing Fn-F4. The wireless works OK out of the box, but it does seem to drop out randomly, then reconnect. The hot-key to turn it on and off does not work. You can turn wireless on and off manually, though.

If I could get these few little annoyances fixed, then it will be hasta-la-vista Windows 7.

Download and Save Youtube Videos in Ubuntu

Here is an easy way to download and save Youtube videos using Chrome and Ubuntu. I suspect that this will work with Firefox as well.

Here are the steps:

1. Visit the Youtube and select the video that you want. Start watching the video and wait for it to complete loading. Keep the web page up. Once you navigate away, the file found in step 2 will be removed.

2. Open up Nautilus and navigate to the /tmp directory.

3. In that directory is a file called "FlashBkJpeo" or something like that. Simply drag it onto your desktop and rename it!

4. Once it is on your desktop, you can play it by double clicking on the video.

Voila! You have downloaded a Youtube video.

Empathy Gets No Sympathy

Pidgin used to be a default install in Ubuntu, but was recently dropped in the most recent release of Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I occasionally used Pidgin on private chat server that was used a part of my regular employment. It is something that was not used all that often, maybe a couple of times of year.

This past week I needed to connect up to the chat server and gave Empathy a try. After a few minutes of fiddling around with the settings, I could not get it to work. Part of the problem was that I was not familiar with the set-up in Empathy, and the set up screens did not match-up at all with the generic set of instructions that are provided by my employer.

I am not sure why there was a change in applications in this latest release of Ubuntu. Pidgin seemed to work just fine. I found it in the Software Center and installed Pidgin. The nice thing I found was that you are able to remove Empathy as well. In the past, some applications in Ubuntu were tied to the ubuntu-gnome-desktop package, and individual packages were not able to be removed.

I am back to using Pidgin. In this case, I am just to lazy to track down how to set up Empathy and Pidgin properly. But Empathy, you'll still get no sympathy from me!

Ubuntu One

Anybody try Ubuntu One? With the latest version of Ubuntu, 9.10 there is a software package that allows you to sync files on your desktop to another PC, via a file drop box service. It is part of the default install for Karmic Koala. I thought it was a nice feature. You get about 2 GB of storage area.

The client runs on your desktop and checks a folder in your home directory every so often for updated files. When it sees that a file has been updated, it will automatically sync it up to a server. I wonder what would happen if you logged off in the middle of a sync? I have not tested that out. So far I have been only using it to save documents and a few work files. I was able to sync them up from my Ubuntu machine at home, and upload the files. The next day at work, it was an easy retrieval, even from a Windows machine.

There seems to be no equivalent to a client that would run on a Windows machine for automatic file syncing. That probably would be the next step.

If I stick to straight documents, I seem to get the same functionality out of Google Docs. But Google Docs is a manual process. My guess is that some sort of file syncing process will arise out of the new Chrome OS. The possibilities are there.

Swapping drives in Ubuntu Not A Problem

I recently got my hands on a decent computer to upgrade an "old beast" that I had Ubuntu installed on. The hardware between the "old beast" and my "decent computer" were a little different. Both were Dells, but they had different video cards. The processors, were of the same type, both Intel. However, the hard drive on the "old beast" was much larger than the one that came with the decent machine.

I was in a lazy mood, and did not want to back up all of the data I had on the "old beast." I decided to try the quick and dirty route of taking the hard drive out of the "old beast" and installing it on the newer "decent" machine.

Totally different video cards, and when the newer machine booted, it came up using the vesa driver. I then added the new driver using the Add/Remove tool, and viola! My new machine is up and running with the "old beast's" hard drive.

Ubuntu never ceases to amaze me in its portability!

Christmas Music on Ubuntu Rhythmbox

I have been learning to use Rythmbox's Radio Station a little more, and found that it is pretty easy to get all of Sky.fm's radio station feeds integrated with Rhythmbox. I added the Christmas Music stream offered by Sky.fm and it was very easy to do.

Simply go to this link, and mouseover the Listen Now! tab to select the the channel you want, the MP3 streams and 96K. Once you have the channel you want selected then right click to select "Copy Link Location."

Next open up Rythmbox and right click on Radio and select "New Internet Radio Station" then paste in the link into the url window that come up.

You then have the radio station saved in your radio list. You can right click on it to change the title from the properties menu.

With a little time spent, you can get the entire Sky.fm directory integrated right into Rythmbox.

Speed Up Ubuntu Boot Time

Here is a simple way to speed up the boot time of your Ubuntu system. It involves recreating the readahead profile. Readahead is a daemon that runs in Ubuntu that loads a set if files into page cache that accelerates the first time of loading of programs.

The initial install of the OS comes with its own default set of files. But every system is a little different and you can rebuild this profile in one easy step once you have every thing installed.

Your run this profile program once during boot-up, then after that you are set. I tested this out on a couple of different system and found that you can shave between 5 and 10 seconds off of the boot up time.

Here is how it works.

First boot your system. At the Grub prompt hit the 'esc' key.

At the next menu the default kernal should be selected, so hit 'e' for edit. Then arrow down to the line the starts with the word 'kernel'. Arrow all the way to the end of this line (after the words 'quiet' and 'splash') type the word:

profile

Then hit 'enter' and then hit 'b'

Your system will then boot. For this first boot-up your system will take about twice as long as the profiling program sets up for the readahead. But after the next boot, you just bring the system up the regular way, and you will notice a little faster boot time.

This procedure is not something that I would do everyday, but if you install a new system, do a major upgrade, etc. then it may be helpful to run through this procedure.

Using Ubuntu to Recover Data from an XP Drive

I have several PCs in my house. One of them, a Microsoft Windows XP stopped booting for me. I was not sure if the motherboard went bad or the disk drive. This PC had a lot of files on it that were important for my wife and her on line studies. Unfortunately, I was a little re-miss in making routine backups. I did not want her to lose here files, and wanted to at least get the latest copy of her files saved off before I performed major surgery o

Luckily, I had a couple of Ubuntu Live Cd's on hand.

I simply placed a live CD in the bad computer and booted into Ubuntu. The live CD noticed the bad drive, which was no longer bootable, and mounted it. It seemed that just the boot record od the drive was bad, as all of the data was still there. I sort of lucked out, that I was able to recover all of the data in her Windows directory.

I copied the files I needed from the disk that was not longer bootable onto my usb thumb drive. This is done under the "Places" menu. The process was really easy, as you can just use click and drag.

Once I had the file copied I exited out. I am not sure if the motherboard is bad, or if it is the disk drive. I may just wipe the drive and start fresh. Still have to make a decision on that one.

Find Your Hardware and Parts in Ubuntu

In Ubuntu, the best information can be gleaned from the system using the command line interface.

Here is an Ubuntu command that will tell you just about every thing you need to know about the hardware that is running on your system

From your desktop hit -F2. Check the "Run in Terminal" check box

and enter:

sudo lshw |less

Then enter your password when prompted.

You will then get a listing of all the hardware and parts that make up your PC or laptop