Mick's World

So it’s been a while since the first part of the Ubuntu series, i thought i’d better pull my finger out and post some more of my findings about this great OS.

Last time i spoke about the initial setup of Ubuntu and getting it running as a server for my development needs, but also having the pretty desktop that Ubuntu provides.

Getting the video to work

One of the first problems that i ran into after having the desktop setup was the resolution and refresh rate. I looked around for a while and started reading the Ubuntu Forums which i found to be an extremely valuable resource. Having an NVIDIA card, i was having trouble finding the correct drivers to use and each time i set it up and changed the refresh rate i ran into problems with GDM crashing on restart.

That was until i came across a thread on the forums that describes installing Beryl with the latest NVIDIA drivers. I was only interested in the part about the drivers, in particular option 2, which gives a link to the drivers and also gives the following commands:

sudo nano /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common
Add “nv” at the bottom

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential gcc gcc-3.4 xserver-xorg-dev
sudo apt-get –purge remove nvidia-glx nvidia-settings nvidia-kernel-common
sudo rm /etc/init.d/nvidia-*
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9629-pkg1.run
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

What’s really important is that the linux-restricted-modules are removed before installing the NVIDIA drivers. After this install was complete i ran the xserver-xorg configuration.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

No more flickering monitor.

I want the proper icons

So there’s the whole thing about the licensing of Mozilla products on the Debain OS. But i want the proper icons for Firefox and Thunderbird. Once again thanks to the Ubuntu forums i was able to get them back to the originals. Although this is a minor issue, if you like having things the right way, then this is a must.

Windows XP

Although Ubuntu is rapidly becoming a good alternative to Windows for a variety of applications, there are still a few reasons to run Windows.

Obviously there are some programs that require Windows to run as they don’t have a Linux alternative. There are many emulators and programs that allow you to achieve the running of Windows apps under Linux. There’s Wine, VMware, but then there’s QEMU. I like QEMU, as it’s easy and free and runs an emulation of Windows, rather than how Wine runs the windows within Linux and makes them look ugly. QEMU also has an accelerator called KQEMU, which adds a considerable performance increase.

When i installed QEMU i followed a tutorial on the Ubuntu website, however since then i have found another more in depth tutorial that includes the QEMU Launcher. If you have already installed QEMU, the GUI launcher makes for easy configuration and execution of your Windows (or OS of choice) image. Why not use the GUI if you’re already using X. It’s as easy as this to install:

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Add
deb http://emeitner.f2o.org/debian/ ./

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qemu-launcher

Extending the server

So i thought now i’ve got this great server going and can work on my PHP stuff, why not install Ruby on Rails, since i’d wanted to see what all the fuss is about and hadn’t previously seen more than the 15 minute video tutorial on the website.

Anyway i looked around for a while to find a quick and easy guide on installing Ruby on Rails. Another thing that i wanted to do was to run it as an Apache module as opposed to lighthttp so that all the web serving and accessing of web projects was done through the one service. After searching i came across this nice and simple guide on getting Ruby on Rails up and running on my Apache server. Since then i have found another post which show how to run Rails on lighthttp using Apache as a proxy. Though i’m yet to try it out.

Two keyboards. One too many.

Having two computers to work on is great as you can do a lot more multitasking, the problem that i had was having a keyboard and mouse for each screen. Sure i could go out and get KVM, however i didn’t want to have to buy that when i was sure there would be a software alternative. That was when i came across Synergy.

Synergy allows you to run a server application which clients can connect to and talk to each other about the location of each screen. For example, Screen A is to the left of Screen B and Screen B is to the right of Screen A. The combinations that you can have are limitless as you can have left, right, up, down on each screen. So you could have a pretty serious matrix of screens going on, all controlled by the one keyboard and mouse without expensive hardware. When you get to the edge of the screen, the mouse flicks over the the corresponding screen and the keyboard is automatically activated for use on the screen.

I installed Synergy following this how to guide. I’m very happy with it as it give me heaps more room on my desk and i’m not having to move keyboards around or sit on an uncomfortable angle when switching between computers.

What next?

Well, there it is. Part 2 of the series. I’m not sure if there will be a part 3 at this stage, as this is most of what i’ve done with my Ubuntu box at the moment. Enjoy having fun with Ubuntu, i certainly am!