Saturday, March 28, 2009

Slow Songs Of The 80s





past few days, I'm testing Ubuntu 9.04 (in particular, from the alpha-4 ) in two of the computers I have at home.

scenarios are quite different: One is a desktop computer that already has some time (about 4 years), but enough for domestic work and everyday browsing, it is a Pentium 4 HT 3GHz with 2GB of RAM. On this team, until a few weeks ago using only Windows XP. Already in the past had tried to install Ubuntu on this machine, but had some hardware particular some difficulties occasioned me the proper functioning of different Linux distributions I had tried on the computer. Right now, I can say that 95% of hardware on my computer works perfectly, and I finally decided to park and change Windows XP to Linux. In Linux, particularly Ubuntu, I have all the software you usually need for the tasks you usually do. Besides this, I find some additional advantages as

. There is software to get something similar in Windows, but installation is far from trivial. Fully automatic updating : OS + applications. Given the enormous amount of software available (freely: free & legal) in the official repositories, just need to install additional software. All the software that comes from the repository is updated (bug fixes and security fixes) so automated and very simple.


not intend to do a comparison and list the advantages of one OS over another. The free systems advantages are many and here only indicated that interest me get to this particular unit.

Among the new features of note:
  • Updates: 02/06/1928
  • Kernel and Gnome 2.26

Apparently startup is faster. I say apparently because the previous use with other versions of Linux on this machine has been very limited, and in any case had no prior actions. The current situation is that from the initial screen of GRUB to be the user's session with a wireless connection established, it takes about 45 seconds, which I think is a great time. Indicate that the system works with ext3

, because although in some places indicates that it can use the new ext4 filesystem

in Ubuntu 9.04, and that improvements are achieved this time around 20%, I would have preferred for now continue working in the traditional way.
  • There are some changes in the appearance of the interface: In addition to the wallpaper, especially the notification system. The main advantage of the fact of being less intrusive.
  • The second team is already a veteran of Linux: It is an Asus Eee PC 701

, inside which have already passed (and the original Xandros) versions 7.10, 8.04 and 8.10 of Ubuntu. Currently, this team works with Ubuntu 8.10, which has had to make some modifications, mainly to use the wireless card. The best news I could hear is that in version 9.04 the card is supported without modification: Using version 9.04 Beta

live mode, 100% of hardare team appears to work smoothly. In particular, the navigation works without any difficulty.



Wednesday, March 4, 2009

How Long Have You Had Gastritis?

News in Problems with USB wireless adapter in Linux + Firefox

The purpose of this post is to tell a simple solution that can be useful for solve problems with some USB wireless adapters on Linux. In my case, I use a Netgear MA111 adapter (v1) , based on the chipset prism2. This device, although it has more than five years old, to withstand speeds of only 11Mbps (802.11b) and being a USB1.1 device, it is perfectly functional and perfectly fulfills its mission.

64-bit Ubuntu 8.10
. Thanks to the enormous effort of the developers and the large number of supported hardware, the adapter works without any kind of configuration, both starting with a live-usb and with the newly installed distribution. The only requirement is to enter the network key, and function.
The problem appears after a few minutes browsing: The connection is broken and can not recreate it. After several attempts (disable and enable the network again, remove and replace the adapter, download and upload - rmmod / insmod / modprobe -) modules that control the device, there is no choice but to restart the computer to regain network.
The problem is repeated in each session. Traffic of a few MB is sufficient for locking the network device. In seeking more information, I find that at the time that network traffic is interrupted, the system log (dmesg
) are dozens of messages like this:

hfa384x_usbctlx_complete_sync: CTLX [3] error: state (Request failed)

After searching a bit the string with the error message in question, find that the error is more or less common and occurs with many models of USB wireless adapters. In particular, I find some

launchpad entry reporting the error. Continuing the search, there is also a proposal

solution.
 
I decide to try it:
Marked as blacklist the module

prism2_pci

prism2_pci blacklist sudo echo>> / etc / modprobe.d / blacklist

After restarting the computer, I begin to navigate, with multiple tabs, listening to online radio simultaneously with Rhythmbox. I am dedicated to see also Chapter 1

Red Eagle, and so far everything works perfectly.

$ ifconfig wlan0 error.
 
Conclusion: Highly recommended for all who try have a problem with wireless network cards in Linux

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Why Does Crystal Meth Make You Ugly

FlashPlayer 64 bit Ubuntu 8.10 Spam

I recently installed Ubuntu 8.10 x86_64 on a computer until now used to work with Windows XP. I am now installing software and doing some tests about the usability of the team, especially since it is 64-bits.
After more than 4 years using 64-bit Linux distributions on production servers, I have no doubt that this is an excellent choice for this type of machine. However, for home computers whose primary use is to be used as desktop computer, do not quite decide whether it is better to opt for the strength of something amply proven, or if instead it is worthwhile to gain some performance but sometimes leads us to encounter difficulties of a bet-tester.
For those who want to try the latter, for some time Adobe provides 64-bit versions of its popular Flash player. Those who want to install the official Ubuntu repositories (version 8.10, 64 bits), will find that installing the 32 bit through ndiswrapper.
 can download and manually install 64-bit (just a few days ago, on February 24, 2009, published a new version: 10.0.22.87). 

The process is so simple:


$ cd / tmp $ wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar
. gz $ tar-xzf libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz $ sudo mv libflashplayer.so / usr / lib / firefox-addons / plugins
Then restart Firefox, and you we have both a browser and a flash player in 64 bits.

In the Adobe website, insist that this is an alpha version

, so it will be more or less frequent than the browser to crash when accessing certain pages flash. It should be clear that this is a tool for testing or for developers, but for end users who want a stable, for now the recommendation is to use the 32 bits.


Update (July-March-2009)
: It seems that users of 64-bit systems will still have to wait a bit to have a flash playback environment stable.
 After seeing the very unstable alpha version is provided by Adobe, I use the version of the Ubuntu repositories (32 bits + wrapper). This version generates sporadic errors like this: 



npviewer.bin [5916]: segfault at ff9bea2c sp 00000000ff9bea2c ip error 4
00000000ff8cecec

And in trying to get a little more information on Launchpad encentro me what is probably the most common error experienced
currently
Ubuntu (no more than to see the number of subscribers and duplicates .) Maybe it's time to thoroughly test swfdec and Gnash