Author Archives: David

New Laptop with kUbuntu Action

kubuntuMy new laptop finally arrived. It is a Dell Precision M90. It is an Intel Core Duo 2.16ghz machine with a beautiful 17″ WUXGA screen (1920×1200), DVDRW, bluetooth, and a Dell 1490 Wifi adapter.

Why am I specifying the adapter? Because, before deciding on this laptop, I did a little research into Linux compatability. I found that the Intel Wifi adapter that they try to push on you, is not well supported in Linux, whereas the Dell 1490 is a Broadcom chip, which using the ndiswrapper drivers, is supported.

I gave the laptop a day to “wow” me with Windows XP. I tried out all the features included, poked around at the software and configurations. I tried using Outlook, of which the company had configured for me, and wondered, “Why would anyone put up with this?”

I will admit, Microsoft has done a great job of making the web version of Outlook look exactly like the stand alone client. Though I get the feeling they made the client look/work like the web version. There were some things such as dropping down a menu item, and having it disappear when I moved to select something, that just made it unbearable to use.

But I digress. Since I didn’t have the time the first day to install Linux, I downloaded some Opensource apps that could make using Windows a bit more bearable. Namely: Firefox, OpenOffice, VLC, Gaim, PDFCreator, Spybot.

For the moment, my only “need” in Windows is MS Project, for which I have already described how I got that running under Linux.

Since I have been handing out copies of Kubuntu to friends that are interested in Linux, I must admit, I have not installed it myself. Its based on Debian, and I have loaded the Live CD and it was good enough for me.

My feeling is that the Ubuntu group has done a terrific job of taking some of the great Linux technologies in Debian and Gnome and KDE, and made an easy to use distribution. Why I chose Kubuntu vs Ubuntu as the distribution to hand out and recommend, is that Ubuntu defaults to Gnome, and Kubuntu defaults to KDE for the desktop environment. I have used both Gnome and KDE desktop environments, and I have found that KDE has come a long way as far as usability, and since that is the desktop I use regularly, I recommend it to others. (I also can help them if the need arises since I am so familiar with it)

After getting home I took one of my Kubuntu discs and booted it on the laptop. Although I have had to help some people resolve (or work through) some incompatibility issues, I was lucky to not have any that prevented me from operating.

So far the biggest issues with Linux on laptops is Wifi support. There are so many chip makers out there, and so many just won’t release the code for their drivers, or make Linux drivers, that it is difficult to get every one working. Infact, one of the most common ways to get the wifi drivers working, is to actually use what is called the ndiswrapper, which actually uses the Windows XP drivers (the .inf and .sys files) to work under Linux. That is what I had to do with the Dell M90.

The other issue a friend of mine had was with using a printer…granted he was trying to use a $20k multipurpose 200k page/day Canon network printer, by directly connecting to it with a usb cable. It does work in Windows, and from what I have read should work under Linux…but there is just something we are missing in debugging that problem.

With my boot up, I had network, bluetooth, sound, and full resolution video right from the start. I was content with this, so I started with a resize of my WinXP partition. This is actually in the Installer on the Desktop, but I wanted to make sure the resize wouldn’t trash the Windows partition, so I did it manually before installing.

I resized the 100gb NTFS parition using QTParted (gParted in Ubuntu), to 60gb. Clicked Apply Changes, and away it went. Less than a minute later it was done, so I rebooted to verify Windows was still there. It was, and after it running CHKDSK since the size changed, it rebooted again, and was perfectly fine.

Content with that, I installed Kubuntu, which surprisingly took only about 15 minutes.

Now all that is need is some broadband access, and I can install all the applications that I use on a regular basis. Sadly, by default Firefox is not installed (because it has Konqueror), OpenOffice is there, but many other apps I use aren’t. But then how much can they really put on a CD? Well actually, enough to get you up and running, with web tools, an OfficeSuite, CD/DVD burning, multimedia apps, etc…I guess I am just picky.

Windows in a Linux Box

My company handed me a copy of MS Project, of which I now must learn to use. I was going to write about how I was using Planner under Linux (which is what I started this project on), but since they are going to be getting the Project Server, and I am the first person to use this software, its my job to make the most of it.

One problem is that I no longer have the laptop I was borrowing, and my laptop is not due in for another few days. So my personal computer is in the office, and that is where I am working from now, for all my project needs. So how am I to install MS Project?

I could boot into Win2k, but I really can’t function for very long in that environment, and my desktop machine is really driven by Linux (Debian to be precise).

First off, I tried to just install Project under Linux with Wine. It got about halfway through the install process when it died of an error. I figure there are some underlying pieces that it just isn’t going to find in Wine. My next idea was to get a Virtual Machine (VM) going.

I have used VmWare in the past, but I don’t have that installed on this system. Neither do I have Win4lin, but my experience there says, its really good for running Win98, and not much beyond.

What I do have, and what I have played with most recently is Qemu. Using the programs that come with it, I created a 4gb disk image: qemu-img create WinXPPro.img 4G

Put in the WinXP Pro CD, and then “booted” the system: qemu -m 512 -cdrom /dev/hdc WinXPPro.img

After that, the install process began, and before long XP was installed and ready to go. Next, I installed MS Project, and it went in without error.

Now, the only problem I have encountered is that for some reason my License for XP Pro will not work. I will likely have to call up MS to correct the issue, but I will deal with that when I move this image to my laptop.

Initially, the VM was running a bit sluggish, but after installing the kernel modules (Qemu Accelerator), XP was running pretty much as fast as if it wasn’t under a virtual machine.

The interesting thing to consider here is that I can use this image, install applications, etc, under Linux. But just as easily I can copy this file to another computer, and use Qemu to run it just the same. Even still, I can use the Windows version of Qemu and run this same image in someone elses Windows machine. I am strongly considering installing all of the engineering software I need in this VM, and just carting it around with me. Put it on a >4GB USB drive, and I will have a complete portable workstation that can be run from just about anyones computer.

Believe me, this is not an original idea. The first I’ve seen of this was in Damn Small Linux, which is meant to be a portable linux distribution you can fit on a usb key. Actually, DSL is the first time I had seen Qemu.

Its amazing this things we can learn when we just play.

New Hardware & Finding Solutions

My free time this week has been sadly, offline. The place I am now living has no broadband…at least not yet. The laptop I am borrowing, has to go back, and my computer won’t be in for another week. What is a techno-junkie to do?

Interestingly, the new job has given me a Cingular 8125. Which as I have found is an HTC Pocket PC Phone, running (unfortunately) Windows Mobile 5.0.

When will those Asian Linux based phones make their way over here?

I must admit this “phone” is more a pda with phone capabilities…though it is neat. It syncs up with Exchange server, can connect over available Wifi connections, or the Edge/GPRS phone networks, or bluetooth. This is handy to get and send emails on the fly. It has a slide out keyboard which one might think is neat, but it’s no where near as fast as one might think. Actually, the handwriting recognition is pretty good, and now that I found that input method I use it more and more, and actually see it as a reason to improve my cursive skills.

The one thing I don’t like is that your Contact list in Outlook (on the Exchange server) is you phonebook. Which means many people you would have as email contacts, that you would never call are there to sort through when you want to find someone. The other thing I really don’t like, is this is very much a 2 handed phone. Meaning, if you want to make calls, unless you go with the voice dial, you need to carefully dial buttons on the screen…and make sure you don’t press the phone to your face otherwise you could do any number of things.

That being said, it is a learning curve to use this as a phone successfully, and whether I will really be happy with not having that tactile feel of real buttons to dial with or not, remains to be seen.

One neat thing I have read about and has taken me a couple days to get working, is infact using this phone as a modem. At the moment I am connected to the phone via usb cable, and have dialed onto the GPRS network to access the internet. It works, and although the signal isn’t the best here, it claims I am getting 230kbs (at least on modem connection speed).

One major fault I have with this phone, in that I am not surprised with it being Windows, is that the first day I had it….It CRASHED! Not only that, it crashed once a day for the first 3 days. I think its just a matter of learning how to use Windows. In Linux, one becomes used to running tons of programs at once….and wuth this just clicking on all the applications to see what they do, leaves them running on the phone.

Now I recall from when I used Windows, that applications would often tell you to close other applications while running…I assume they have carried this trait over to the phones and more than 3-4 apps running bogs down the phone and it crashes. WTF? I have a phone that sometimes can’t be used as a phone? When this crashes, you have to pull the battery to restart it. And apparently I haven’t found the setting to save settings, because I notice a lot of things go back to their defaults after “rebooting”…Its nice to know that the reboot feature, Windows users are so familiar with, has made it way to other hardware.

I hope Windows never makes its way into my car.

Update: Transfer speeds are actually modem speeds. I am getting a max of 5KB/s

A Linux Soul in a Windows World

EvolutionAs I start work with a new company, I exposed to all sorts of strange and wonderful things. First off, they provided me with an email account. Apparently they run MS Exchange Server, and there is something I have never seen before called OWA or Outlook Web Access.

So I point my happy Firefox browser to the website and log in. Its webmail with calendar and whatnot. No folders along the side, or easy access to drag and drop…but its web mail so what should I expect? Except, I am told by a friend that OWA looks different if you use Internet Explorer.

“Oh really?”, I ask. So I flip the bit on User Agent Switcher in Firefox to report that I am IE6 on Windows XP (and no longer Firefox 1.5 on Linux). Lo and behold, it does look different. Granted not everything works, but I can see a folder tree in the sidebar, and the display is obviously different.

At this point, it really is not functional, so I go back to telling it, I am Firefox. My next step was to see how it works with actual IE6, which I have installed to run using Wine. I only use IE6 to just see what the unwashed masses might see on my websites.

From IE6 under Wine, I can log in, but I can’t get to the companies internal website, nor to the place to read my mail…so that is useless. I find humor in the fact that I can read my email using Firefox, but not using IE6…not sure why it refuses to work, but its not that important for me to delve into it.

It took me a bit of time to figure out what was going on in OWA, and where certain settings were, etc. The first thing I looked for, was how to change my password…and apparently that feature, isn’t available in their set up. The IT guy said I can only do in internally, and I have to change it using Ctrl-Alt-Delete. I will take him at his word since that key combination just runs shutdown -r now for me in linux.

After playing with OWA, I found it to be unacceptable for day-to-day communcations. Its cute and easy if I need quick access to email from the road, but it is certainly something that will not work for me long term.

My main email app is Thunderbird, or Gmail on the web, I had heard there was a way to get Thunderbird talking to Exchange Server, but it was more complicated than I cared, and it did not access all of the features. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to try out Evolution, which I had tried years back as an email client, but didn’t like it because it tried too hard to be like Outlook, and Outlook did not allow me to use my email the way most efficient to me. (I come from the PMMail/2 days, and Thunderbird most resembles the interface of PMMail)

It took me about 2 minutes to configure Evolution, just needed the OWA Url and my username and password. I was connected to Exchange, had access to the calendars, shared folders, task lists, etc. It worked, and as far as I can tell, does everything you can do in Outlook. The one thing not configured is the Global Address List. The only reason for this is the IT guy has no idea what I am talking about, and has yet to provide me the location of the Active Directory Server, since it is not at the same address as the Exchange Server.

After using Evolution for a few days, it has enabled me to efficiently integrate Exchange Mail into my work flow.