Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and assorted bits of hardware new and old.
Wednesday 14 October 2009, 2:12 PM
Mandriva One 2010 RC2
I set about installing the new Mandriva One 2010.0 RC2 distribution today, on all of the various netbooks and notebooks around here. It has taken significantly longer than I expected it to, because I have run into a couple of problems. I'm posting this, with the work-arounds I have used, in hopes of saving others some time.
First, though, I want to mention a couple of lesser irritation/problems that I have come across, just to get them out of the way:
- The LiveCD takes a long time to boot. A long, long time. Really long. I thought this might be a quirk of the first machine that I installed it on, but it has done exactly the same thing on five different systems now, so that's obviously not the case. This isn't a exactly a problem, because if you just leave it alone it will usually boot, but I'm sure a lot of people will get tired of waiting or decide that it has hung somehow, and will either try again (and again), or will just give up.
- During the installation, the disk partition selection window is created too small, and has no scroll bars, so one or more of the options is lost off the bottom of the window. I had to resize the window, making it larger, in order to get at the "custom disk partitioning" option.
- There is supposed to be an easy way to convert the LiveCD to a bootable USB image, using a script called mandriva-seed.sh. I gave this one brief try, and it failed to do anything useful, so I didn't bother with it. I may well have been doing something wrong, though.
Ok, now on to the larger problems.
- on three of the five systems I have tried so far, the LiveCD failed to boot. The first of those was my Fujitsu Lifebook S6510, which is a pretty standard Intel Core2 Duo CPU / 965 graphic controller based system, so I don't see why the hardware would confuse it. The other two were both AMD CPU / ATI graphic systems. In all three cases, the problem was that the Mandriva installation process tries to create an xorg.conf file on the fly, and gets it wrong, so the X display server is unable to start. However, this Mandriva distribution is using the latest X.org server (1.6.4), so it doesn't even really need a configuration file, it is able to figure out everything for itself on startup. When the X startup fails, the system is eventually left with just a normal text console login prompt. I was able to fix the problem by logging in, removing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and then starting X manually with startx. From that point, I just proceeded with the normal LiveCD graphical installation procedure.
- After the distribution is successfully installed, the laptop screen resolution is incorrect. Once again, the problem was an incorrect xorg.conf file having been automatically generated, and once again the solution was to remove (or rename) the configuration file. In fact, I ended up removing that file on all of the systems, whether it had a problem or not, because as far as I know that file is really not necessary or terribly useful for the X server, so why not make it simple and consistent. I have not seen any ill affects from this yet.
Once I got past these problems, the RC2 distribution seems to work very well on everything I have tried. That includes systems with Intel and AMD CPUs; Intel, ATI and nVidia graphic controllers; Intel and Broadcom wired ethernet controllers; Broadcom and Atheros wireless network controllers, and assorted other hardware bits. It seems to boot reasonably fast on everything I have, and it feels quick in ordinary use as well. It has all the wonderfully useful Mandriva bits and bobs that make things nice, pleasant and easy. It is available in both KDE and Gnome LiveCDs, and the release notes say that both Xfce and a Moblin user interface can be easy added after installation. I have only tried the KDE version so far.
On the HP 2133 Mini-Note (VIA C7-M CPU), it still did not get CPU frequency scaling activated. I had to make the changes which I have previously described for that system, and then reboot. Frequency scaling then worked properly.
jw 14/10/2009
First, though, I want to mention a couple of lesser irritation/problems that I have come across, just to get them out of the way:
- The LiveCD takes a long time to boot. A long, long time. Really long. I thought this might be a quirk of the first machine that I installed it on, but it has done exactly the same thing on five different systems now, so that's obviously not the case. This isn't a exactly a problem, because if you just leave it alone it will usually boot, but I'm sure a lot of people will get tired of waiting or decide that it has hung somehow, and will either try again (and again), or will just give up.
- During the installation, the disk partition selection window is created too small, and has no scroll bars, so one or more of the options is lost off the bottom of the window. I had to resize the window, making it larger, in order to get at the "custom disk partitioning" option.
- There is supposed to be an easy way to convert the LiveCD to a bootable USB image, using a script called mandriva-seed.sh. I gave this one brief try, and it failed to do anything useful, so I didn't bother with it. I may well have been doing something wrong, though.
Ok, now on to the larger problems.
- on three of the five systems I have tried so far, the LiveCD failed to boot. The first of those was my Fujitsu Lifebook S6510, which is a pretty standard Intel Core2 Duo CPU / 965 graphic controller based system, so I don't see why the hardware would confuse it. The other two were both AMD CPU / ATI graphic systems. In all three cases, the problem was that the Mandriva installation process tries to create an xorg.conf file on the fly, and gets it wrong, so the X display server is unable to start. However, this Mandriva distribution is using the latest X.org server (1.6.4), so it doesn't even really need a configuration file, it is able to figure out everything for itself on startup. When the X startup fails, the system is eventually left with just a normal text console login prompt. I was able to fix the problem by logging in, removing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and then starting X manually with startx. From that point, I just proceeded with the normal LiveCD graphical installation procedure.
- After the distribution is successfully installed, the laptop screen resolution is incorrect. Once again, the problem was an incorrect xorg.conf file having been automatically generated, and once again the solution was to remove (or rename) the configuration file. In fact, I ended up removing that file on all of the systems, whether it had a problem or not, because as far as I know that file is really not necessary or terribly useful for the X server, so why not make it simple and consistent. I have not seen any ill affects from this yet.
Once I got past these problems, the RC2 distribution seems to work very well on everything I have tried. That includes systems with Intel and AMD CPUs; Intel, ATI and nVidia graphic controllers; Intel and Broadcom wired ethernet controllers; Broadcom and Atheros wireless network controllers, and assorted other hardware bits. It seems to boot reasonably fast on everything I have, and it feels quick in ordinary use as well. It has all the wonderfully useful Mandriva bits and bobs that make things nice, pleasant and easy. It is available in both KDE and Gnome LiveCDs, and the release notes say that both Xfce and a Moblin user interface can be easy added after installation. I have only tried the KDE version so far.
On the HP 2133 Mini-Note (VIA C7-M CPU), it still did not get CPU frequency scaling activated. I had to make the changes which I have previously described for that system, and then reboot. Frequency scaling then worked properly.
jw 14/10/2009
Wednesday 14 October 2009, 8:59 AM
Real Desperation at Skype?
Ok, I might have been wrong. It is certainly starting to look like I was, although I'm not quite ready to give up yet. It looks like the battle between Skype and JoltID might be more than a publicity stunt with a predetermined outcome. Of course, if that is true, then it is also true that eBay somehow managed to find someone to buy Skype from them who is every bit as blind, gullible, naive, or whatever as they themselves were when they bought Skype (minus the technology at the heart of it) a few years ago. P.T. Barnum had an interesting observation which seems to apply here...
The reason I am bringing this up again now is that I have seen rumors this morning about Skype buying Gizmo5, perhaps as a way out of the JoltID bind. I find this terribly amusing, as Gizmo5 and their founer, Michael Robertson, have been a thorn in Skype's side for a long time, both in the market and in the press. In fact, $50 million is more or less "chump change" compared to the billions which have been tossed around buying and selling Skype twice now. So it seems to me that there are three possible reasons that Skype might be considering buying Gizmo5: to shut them up, to shut them down, or to use their technology.
It will be interesting to see if these rumors turn out to be true, and if they do, then to see what Skype really wants with Gizmo5.
jw 14/10/2009
P.S. There is one thing that I find very curious about the article cited above. After blindly parroting the Skype marketing hype "Skype has now more than 400 million users", which pretty much anyone who knows much about Skype says is complete garbage, he goes on to say "Gizmo5 says it has 6 million users, though it is hard to verify that number". Yeah. Right. No doubt or skepticism expressed about Skype's number, but Gizmo's is "difficult to verify"? I guess that just serves to justify Skype's belief in the old saying, if you repeat something enough times, people will believe it.
The reason I am bringing this up again now is that I have seen rumors this morning about Skype buying Gizmo5, perhaps as a way out of the JoltID bind. I find this terribly amusing, as Gizmo5 and their founer, Michael Robertson, have been a thorn in Skype's side for a long time, both in the market and in the press. In fact, $50 million is more or less "chump change" compared to the billions which have been tossed around buying and selling Skype twice now. So it seems to me that there are three possible reasons that Skype might be considering buying Gizmo5: to shut them up, to shut them down, or to use their technology.
It will be interesting to see if these rumors turn out to be true, and if they do, then to see what Skype really wants with Gizmo5.
jw 14/10/2009
P.S. There is one thing that I find very curious about the article cited above. After blindly parroting the Skype marketing hype "Skype has now more than 400 million users", which pretty much anyone who knows much about Skype says is complete garbage, he goes on to say "Gizmo5 says it has 6 million users, though it is hard to verify that number". Yeah. Right. No doubt or skepticism expressed about Skype's number, but Gizmo's is "difficult to verify"? I guess that just serves to justify Skype's belief in the old saying, if you repeat something enough times, people will believe it.
Tuesday 13 October 2009, 5:52 AM
Mandriva One 2010 RC2 Available
For the Mandriva users who have been waiting anxiously (hi, Ator!), the iso images for Mandriva One 2010 RC2 are now available. The Mandriva Free version has been available since the end of last week, but the One version always lags a few days behind.
I am downloading it now, and will install it on everything around here over the next couple of days. If it is even better than the RC1 release, it will be very good indeed.
jw 13/10/2009
I am downloading it now, and will install it on everything around here over the next couple of days. If it is even better than the RC1 release, it will be very good indeed.
jw 13/10/2009
Sunday 11 October 2009, 8:11 AM
Bluetooth USB Nano Dongle
I have a very strong preference for Bluetooth mice on my netbook and notebook systems. Unfortunately, a couple of them don't have bluetooth adapters - most significantly the HP Pavillion dv2-1010ez, which is becoming my current favorite, and one of the HP 2133 Mini-Notes. It occasionally takes a long time for the solution to a problem to filter through my head, and this was one of those cases. I was just about to go out and buy a new Logitech VX Nano, which I consider to be the next best alternative, when suddenly the light finally came on. What I really need is a Nano-sized bluetooth adapter!
A quick web search confirmed that such a thing does exist, from various suppliers. I made a short trip to the local electronic shop, and picked up a Trust Ultra Small Bluetooth 2.1 USB Adapter for 25 Swiss Francs. I plugged it into the 1010ez, booted up Ubuntu Karmic, and the Bluetooth icon appeared on the panel! Things just don't get any easier than that. By the way, you can tell that it is a bluetooth adapter because it glows blue. I tried it with Jaunty, openSuSE 11.1 and 11.2, and Mandriva 20009.1 and 2010.0, and they all worked. I moved it over to the old Fujitsu-Siemens S2110, and it worked just fine there as well. At that point I threw the Windows Driver CD that came with it in the trash, and declared the Mission Accomplished. I can't try it in the HP Mini-Note at the moment, because that system is on temporary duty in Bosnia (on loan to a friend), but I have no doubt that it will work as well.
There are similar dongles available from a number of other companies, I assume that they would work every bit as well. I'll probably pick up one of them this week, so that I can just leave one plugged into each of the bluetoothless systems.
It's so nice when things just work!
jw 11/9/2009
P.S. I just realized that I didn't explain, for those to whom it is not obvious, the reason I wanted a "Nano"-style dongle is the size, it is not much more than a nub protruding from the usb slot, so I can plug it in and leave it, rather than the older "thumb"-sized dongles, which you have to remove when you want to put the computer into a case. In fact, because the capability and compatibility is essentially the same for most such USB/Bluetooth adapters these days, choosing one is likely to come down to a preference on size and shape.
A quick web search confirmed that such a thing does exist, from various suppliers. I made a short trip to the local electronic shop, and picked up a Trust Ultra Small Bluetooth 2.1 USB Adapter for 25 Swiss Francs. I plugged it into the 1010ez, booted up Ubuntu Karmic, and the Bluetooth icon appeared on the panel! Things just don't get any easier than that. By the way, you can tell that it is a bluetooth adapter because it glows blue. I tried it with Jaunty, openSuSE 11.1 and 11.2, and Mandriva 20009.1 and 2010.0, and they all worked. I moved it over to the old Fujitsu-Siemens S2110, and it worked just fine there as well. At that point I threw the Windows Driver CD that came with it in the trash, and declared the Mission Accomplished. I can't try it in the HP Mini-Note at the moment, because that system is on temporary duty in Bosnia (on loan to a friend), but I have no doubt that it will work as well.
There are similar dongles available from a number of other companies, I assume that they would work every bit as well. I'll probably pick up one of them this week, so that I can just leave one plugged into each of the bluetoothless systems.
It's so nice when things just work!
jw 11/9/2009
P.S. I just realized that I didn't explain, for those to whom it is not obvious, the reason I wanted a "Nano"-style dongle is the size, it is not much more than a nub protruding from the usb slot, so I can plug it in and leave it, rather than the older "thumb"-sized dongles, which you have to remove when you want to put the computer into a case. In fact, because the capability and compatibility is essentially the same for most such USB/Bluetooth adapters these days, choosing one is likely to come down to a preference on size and shape.
Friday 9 October 2009, 2:03 PM
Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Beta
I've been installing the Karmic Beta release on everything I have around here, and the news is generally good. Some of this I have mentioned before, and some is new; some is significant, and some is trivial... so here we go!
First, in the category of "mentioned before" and "significant", we have GRUB-PC, also known as Grub 2, which is the standard bootloader with Ubuntu 9.10. The last time I mentioned it, I said that by going to the "Advanced" button in the final installation screen, you could choose to install GRUB to the root partition rather than the MBR, and thus not screw up your existing installation. Alas, things have now changed and even if you do that, it still renders the system disk unbootable, and you have to restore GRUB from a LiveCD, a backup image, or some such. So beware.
Second, in the "not mentioned before" category, I have now installed Karmic Beta on the following systems:
- Fujitsu S6510, Intel Core2 Duo
- ASUS N10J, Intel Atom
- HP db2-1010ez, AMD Athlon Neo
- HP 2133 Mini, VIA C7-M
I'm very pleased to report that it appears to work extremely well on all of them. Other than having to work around the GRUB installation, I have not yet found a single device which doesn't work, including all of the various screens, graphic controllers, wired and wireless network controllers, bluetooth, and so on.
One excellent piece of machine-specific news. CPU Frequency Scaling works on the VIA C7-M CPU (HP 2133 Mini-Note), without having to edit the kernel boot line. This is the first distribution that I have seen manage this.
Another item I have mentioned before - Karmic supports several hardware devices properly out of the box, which either didn't work at all or didn't work properly with previous releases. The most significant of these are the Atheros ath9k wireless adapter (AR9285 in my specific case), and the Logitech Audio Hub USB Speaker system.
It is worth mentioning that even though it has only been a week since the Beta release, there have already been a lot of very significant updates to it. If you choose to install this Beta, make sure that you go through System/Administration/Update Manager and install all of the updates. It will take at least two or three passes to get them all installed, because partial updates will be necessary at first, so make sure you keep going back and clicking "Check" until it reports "Your System is Up-to-Date".
Please remember that this is still a Beta test release, it is not intended to be installed on critical systems, and it could well get broken (and fixed) again before the final release comes out.
First, in the category of "mentioned before" and "significant", we have GRUB-PC, also known as Grub 2, which is the standard bootloader with Ubuntu 9.10. The last time I mentioned it, I said that by going to the "Advanced" button in the final installation screen, you could choose to install GRUB to the root partition rather than the MBR, and thus not screw up your existing installation. Alas, things have now changed and even if you do that, it still renders the system disk unbootable, and you have to restore GRUB from a LiveCD, a backup image, or some such. So beware.
Second, in the "not mentioned before" category, I have now installed Karmic Beta on the following systems:
- Fujitsu S6510, Intel Core2 Duo
- ASUS N10J, Intel Atom
- HP db2-1010ez, AMD Athlon Neo
- HP 2133 Mini, VIA C7-M
I'm very pleased to report that it appears to work extremely well on all of them. Other than having to work around the GRUB installation, I have not yet found a single device which doesn't work, including all of the various screens, graphic controllers, wired and wireless network controllers, bluetooth, and so on.
One excellent piece of machine-specific news. CPU Frequency Scaling works on the VIA C7-M CPU (HP 2133 Mini-Note), without having to edit the kernel boot line. This is the first distribution that I have seen manage this.
Another item I have mentioned before - Karmic supports several hardware devices properly out of the box, which either didn't work at all or didn't work properly with previous releases. The most significant of these are the Atheros ath9k wireless adapter (AR9285 in my specific case), and the Logitech Audio Hub USB Speaker system.
It is worth mentioning that even though it has only been a week since the Beta release, there have already been a lot of very significant updates to it. If you choose to install this Beta, make sure that you go through System/Administration/Update Manager and install all of the updates. It will take at least two or three passes to get them all installed, because partial updates will be necessary at first, so make sure you keep going back and clicking "Check" until it reports "Your System is Up-to-Date".
Please remember that this is still a Beta test release, it is not intended to be installed on critical systems, and it could well get broken (and fixed) again before the final release comes out.
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