Free Like GNU

Some folks can plop down many hundreds of dollars on iPhones, the latest console game machines (and their pricey games) and Uber desktops. Once in a great while I get to spend a little money to geek out on some kind of technology too, though I have to be a bit more frugal. Usually it’s something old that is cheap on eBay. I’ll look for something that will run Linux and has some novel quirk. One of these was an old Itronix 250 military laptop. The device was waterproof, drop-onto-concrete-proof and weighed more that my 2 other laptop machines combined. I upgraded the processor, hacked in a wifi card and antenna, installed a few various versions of Ubuntu and tried with success to get all the features like touchscreen and graphics drivers working nice. Even though it wasn’t the latest gadget, it was cheap for thrills and exercising the Linux skills. When I sold it (for a bit less than all the time and money I put in) I felt I’d had a good deal of fun with it, like working on an old VW bug. One thing I wish I had tried on it was TinyCore Linux founded by one of the lead developers of the famous DSL project, Robert Shingledecker.  TinyCore takes the idea of a compact yet extensible graphical Linux desktop to the extreme at 10MB!  I think it would also work on an Alix3d3 machine I’m experimenting with.  Currently Voyage is running on the  Alix and humming along quite nicely as a “bulletproof” looping video display device running mplayer with a DVD iso file.  The Alix now looks a bit dated in the graphics compared to the new Ion based tiny PCs out there, but it is still more flexible in some ways and durable.  These little machines are cheap and fun to hack not unlike various wireless routers such as the venerable Linksys wrt54g of old (2.2 and earlier) and the Asus wl500w.  The latter I bought because it had a minipci slot instead of the radio being part of the main board and its usb ports to support the TB drive shared on my little network.  It was a great candidate for the OpenWRT firmware and I found others who had made it work well.  All these things are cheap and distracting, some have proven quite useful.  One thing that really makes it fun is the community.  Because others have written blogs, posted in forums, mailing lists or chatted in IRC, I never feel alone in the dark.   I think this is where the real entertainment value is, especially when we contribute to these conversations with our own experiences, questions, reviews, how-to’s etc.

I wanted to add a kernel module for my Alix 3d3 but I figured I would just build a more current kernel for the Voyage Linux 6 installation instead.  Because I am a total weenie, I got excited about a cool program called KernelCheck.  It’s basically a GUI for building configuring and packaging (yes Debian packaging!) the latest greatest kernel from kernel.org.  I built the kernel from my Ubuntu machine using the latest config file from the Voyage kernel, enabled the joystick module and installed the resultant .deb in Voyage.  w00t!
linux-image-2.6.28.8-ultimate_2.6.28.8-ultimate-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

headers if you need ‘em :

linux-headers-2.6.28.8-ultimate_2.6.28.8-ultimate-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

enjoy!

I must say that Ubuntu 8.10 is really shining on my tablet.  I made a live USB stick of 8.10 with the slick usb-creator app (works from 8.04 too) and booted up with correct resolution (1280×800), perfectly working wireless (intel4965agn adapter) that could connect with my university TTLS/PAP wifi network.  Even the SDHC card reaader is working with my 16GB card! Suspend also worked flawlessly and faster as well (2 or 3 seconds instead of 4 or 5).  Wireless comes back quickly too.  In Hardy I had to wait about 10 seconds before wireless came back online, now it reconnects almost instantly.

The only major snag was having to manually futz with the xorg.conf to get my tablet to work.  Once configured, I played with GIMP, recently updated to 2.6!  GIMP is much improved for tablet support and has some nice options for changing brushstokes with not only pen pressure, but also velocity!  This is as close to painting on a real surface that I’ve seen in any non-custom paint program.

GNOME desktop configuration is much tighter with the Appearance preferences.  The new, darker, human theme is great for those who work in the late hours with lights low or in dimly lit cafes.  I eventually switched back to XFCE for desktop, because of fast rock solid panels (GNOME panels are still relatively sluggish, even with animation turned off and low delay settings).  GNOME does have a very nice way of altering the display settings though.

The main reason for trying 8.10 was the new kernel and wireless stack, and I must say that the increased hardware compatability is well worth it!

Hardy Heron, the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution was released the other day and it was the first time I did not install an alpha or beta Ubuntu on my family set of computers. I have to admit that I feel a little guilty in not testing to the usual extent, a new version of Ubuntu, but Gutsy has been working so well that I’m not compelled to update just yet.

For a user to have such a feeling about some version of an OS distribution marks an important milestone. It means I’m not chomping at the bit for some bug to be fixed and that all the applications I use and want are already available and working well.
I use many bluetooth devices such as headphones, keyboards and phones and they integrate well since Gutsy. Graphics are snappy and sound is working with all of the applications I’ve encountered. Configuring Gutsy to do all of these things, however took some time and effort hunting for answers in Ubuntu forums and Gentoo wikis. It seems that the real attraction for Ubuntu 8.04 will be for the new users who should have a smoother ride migrating from Windows or possibly OS X or as a first computing experience on a new computer.

There is some irony that 8.04 has the monikers “Long Term Support” and Hardy Heron. There have been some complaints about the somewhat dramatic changes in 8.04, in response to the way Xorg is configured (an attempt to make the xorg.conf an anachronism) and the inclusion of Wubi (a method for installing Ubuntu from within Windows) and a beta of Firefox 3 (which is yet waiting for some popular extensions to migrate). These are bold new steps for Ubuntu and is reminiscent of 6.06 Dapper (the last LTS release) innovations such as installation from a live CD (which was a chancy operation at first), persistence of a live CD configuration, and preliminary bluetooth support, network and power managers, not to mention the appearance of Xorg7. But such innovations did not become mature until Ubuntu Edgy, Feisty, and Gutsy (marketed as the more innovative releases). Such irony is interesting, but illustrates how the LTS release actually sets the pace of the interim Ubuntu releases. That said, I look forward to Hardy+1, Intrepid Ibex and for the new Ubuntu user, search the Ubuntu forum posts about your hardware and please give Hardy Heron a try!

In an effort to minimize duplication of effort and allow for editing and optimizations, I’ve posted the Ubuntu How-To on the official OLPC wiki. Please refer to this page and use its TALK tab for discussion. Thanks to everyone for support and encouragement!

Holger Levsen has backported the xorg amd drivers from Dilingers SID to ETCH and made a little repository for them. What this means for Ubuntu Gutsy on the XO is having snappy 2D acceleration (no, GLX gears still runs at about 60fps, and thats not likely to change much due to hardware abilities). Games like Frozen Bubble and playing Xvid videos will see a great improvement however! If you already have Gutsy setup on your XO, and are missing accelerated 2D read on:

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Since we received our OLPC, I’ve had the overwhelming urge to install Xubuntu on it. Xubuntu is not the lightest desktop out there, but the XO seems to play nice with XFCE ontop of the RedHat based OS that comes it, so instead of full-blown Xubuntu, I installed Ubuntu (CLI from net-install) with slimmed XFCE ontop. Ubuntu offers all the software I like to use and <troll>Debian Packages are just SO much more sophisticated than RPMS</troll>! Anyways, here’s how I did it from Ubuntu on my other laptop using QEmu to install from a netboot ISO to disk image to flash drive (or SD card). Basically we are installing Ubuntu to a virtual file, and replacing the kernel and modules with those from the OLPC. It’s a dirty kind of hack (we should really compile the kernel and modules and package it as a .deb, no?) Please let me know if I forgot anything!

EDIT: Please visit the official OLPC wiki page for this guide

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