Seven Essential Tips For Using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

Ed Albro writes "Matthew Newton, a columnist at PC World, has a great article up on seven things you'll want to change as soon as you start using Feisty Fawn. Some are as simple as making sure the Alt key works right, another gives you step-by-step instructions for turning on the impressive Beryl interface. 'I could spend a whole 'nother column telling you about all the great packages that are not installed by default, but for now I'll just leave you with this bonus tip: If you're running Ubuntu on a laptop and your Wi-Fi card is not detected or supported, try installing the Ndisgtk package (listed as such in Synaptic, but as 'Wireless Windows Drivers' in Add/Remove Applications). Then select the new System, Administration, Windows Wireless Drivers entry in Ubuntu's menu bar.'"

Re:Automatix? Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - I cringed when I read that - irresponsible!

I've used EasyUbuntu [freecontrib.org] and the MediUbuntu [sos-sts.com] repositories to get all the same jobs done safely - I would recommend those options instead of Automatix

if you are running a laptop you should not upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a show stopper bug in either the kernel or driver for the ata2 interface.

it's confirmed now that on many laptops the kernel has to restart the ata2 interface intermittently and thereby lock up your system for up to 30 seconds at a time essentially rendering your laptop useless.

stay on lts or edgy for the time being until this bug is fixed:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-so urce-2.6.20/+bug/107271 [launchpad.net]

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The slashdot editors don't change the user article descriptions. Also, to be blunt; the poster forgot to put the word "write" into their blurb, which is a minor error. If you are infallible; then you might be entitled to make comments on grammar. Otherwise: stfu.

Your grammar is not correct. The word is "English" not "english". There goes the whole infalliblity thing.

PS: No, I am not the submitter. I have no affiliation to the author or slashdot; other than being a reader. Just tired of people being (petty) grammar Nazi's.

Re:if you are running a laptop you should not upgr

[brunascle]

from what i've heard, keeping a CD in the cdrom resolves this.

Re:Upgrade From Edgy?

[i.r.id10t]

Definately not good to apt-get dist-upgrade.... my home machine's IDE drives suddenly got referenced as scsis, all sorts of heck broke loose and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

My work machine I followed the process of using the update manager, and all is well.

Re:Automatix? Ugh

[physicsnick]

Exactly. The only reason 90% of people use Automatix is to install codecs, but it's actually easier to install codecs directly than it is to install Automatix. Here's where you should go to install codecs:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormat s [ubuntu.com]

Here's the important part:

Click Applications Add/Remove. In the top right, change the setting to "All available applications". Then select Other in the left panel and then select the Ubuntu restricted extras package. Click OK.
To play most DVDs you'll need the libdvdcss2 package. This package is available using Medibuntu. This is a third party package, and not supported by Canonical.

Here's a direct link to libdvdcss2:
i386: http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/pool/feisty/free /i386/libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu2+build1_i386.deb [sos-sts.com]
amd64: http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/pool/feisty/free /amd64/libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu2+build1_amd64.d eb [sos-sts.com]

Save it to your desktop, then right click and hit Install. That's all you need to do to get codecs for everything. Please, people, avoid Automatix.

Re:Upgrade From Edgy?

[physicsnick]

Here is the official guide from ubuntu.com: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading [ubuntu.com]

First make sure your computer is fully up to date (with Edgy). Then follow these instructions:

1. Open System -> Administration -> Update Manager
2. A button on the top of the window will appear, informing you of the availability of the new release
3. Click Upgrade
4. Follow the on-screen instructions

That page also has a link on how to upgrade manually from a command-line, but it's not recommended.

Re:Automatix? Ugh

[Knuckles]

Given that Feisty will automatically prompt you to install all codecs you will ever need, and the minimal rest (mainly dvd decryption and w32codecs if you prefer xine/mplayer over gstreamer) is in medibuntu, Automatix seems superfluous to me.

Re:BS: Already a great experience by default

[fimbulvetr]

the nvidia-glx-new package supports the 8xxx cards. There's a long story behind why it's called new, and it's all right here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-re stricted-modules-2.6.20/+bug/96430 [launchpad.net]

Don't blame launchpad for the funkiness, they had to work around nvidia's move of de-supporting a huge amount of cards that are still currently very popular.

NDISwrapper is the path of madness

[Hoplite3]

Save yourself sanity. Don't use devices that only have windows drivers running through NDISwrapper. You'll get only a tiny fraction of the functionality, it'll break all the time. My experience has been that devices with in-kernel drivers are worth whatever premium. Always get the intel wireless on your laptop.

NDIS is the lowest level of hardware "support" in Linux. If Stallman warns about binary blobs or nonfree drivers because you don't know what the code is and the drivers stop working after the company stops maintaining them ... just image how terrible it is when you are using another OS's buggy binary-only driver. You have that mental image. Now add demons pouring acid down your throat. You're approaching the reality of NDISwrapper. I think half-broken internet access is worse than no access. You just get tempted to believe that you can really get whatever from the net, only to find that when you count on connectivity, it breaks.

Who is this PC World joker, anyway?

Re:Automatix? Ugh

[physicsnick]

Oops, forgot w32codecs for Windows Media Audio/Video and Realplayer. Here's a deb for i386:

http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/w/w32co decs/w32codecs_20061022-0.0_i386.deb [debian-multimedia.org]

Save to desktop, right-click install. It's built for Debian, but it works for Ubuntu just the same. It's what I use and it works great.

Re:if you are running a laptop you should not upgr

[Knara]

There's a new note in that thread that there's a work around available at the end of this thread [launchpad.net]

Re:if you are running a laptop you should not upgr

[delire]

The new release works great on my Asus M3N laptop; this is a rare case and appears to be fixable. The fix is mentioned on the bottom of that bugreport:

Bug 84603 is the same problem and has a workaround. The new ata-piix driver doesn't play nicely with HAL, so use the old piix driver instead.

To hazard a guess you'd modprobe -r ata-piix and modprobe piix. To make this fix 'permanent' you'd add piix to your modules list and blacklist ata-piix. Don't take my word for it though, discuss it in the forums or IRC.

VMware Tip

[yoshi_mon]

After installing the VMware tools the scroll wheel on most mice will become disabled. To fix this:

1. sudo -i (To become root.)
2. nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf (Or with what ever text editor you wish.)
3. In the Section "InputDevice" for your mouse change the line under "Protocol" that says, "ps/2" to "ImPS/2".
4. Restart X. (ctrl-alt-backspace, reboot, etc)

Re:Grub UUID

[halovaa]

UUIDs are less likely to get changed than the /dev/hd* or /dev/sd* letters. These are sometimes assigned randomly, depending on how your system is set up, or get shuffled in interesting and non-intuitive ways when partitions are changed. My real-life example: I had an IDE controller PCI card in my system. What would happen is that it would sometimes take hda->hdd, leaving my real boot drive as hde, and other times it would take hde->hdh. If I had known about UUIDs, I could have just accepted the changing device names and not worried what they were.

Re:In all honesty..

[mhall119]

* Automatic codec installation is new and very helpful for multi-media.
* Restricted driver manager, helpful for those who need proprietary drivers (helped me with nvidia).
* Upstart, makes boot time much faster.
* Upstream upgrades for Linux Kernel, Gnome, Evolution, OpenOffice, Xorg, Gaim (I think) and many others.

Maybe not as big a difference as there is upgrading from WinXP to Vista, but then again Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) was only released 6 months ago, not 6 years ago like XP.

Re:My tip...

[dan828]

Linux Mint. An Ubuntu based distro that uses French female release names. The latest release is Bianca and the next one will be Casandra. So you can tell you parents it's Mint Linux, Bianca, as opposed to Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn. Also, the blue/green theme it uses out of the box looks nicer than the orange/brown of Ubuntu.

http://linuxmint.com// [linuxmint.com]

Re:Linux: Not There Yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Dude, there's this company called Dell. They did steps 1-10 before they shipped me the box.

But then there's the box I made myself. I'll respond to your FUD point by point there...

> How long is your list for vista/xp?
>
> Xp:
>
> Step 1: Pray you have SP2 to enable firewall.

You don't have the budget for a router while you get SPs and ZoneAlarm (or equivalent) installed?

> Step 2: Install 80+ updates. Reboot at least 4 times, probably one crash at least.

Not actually that bad --and nothing like this with a slipstreamed install. Where are you getting these ancient install disks?

> Step 3: Install all drivers for all hardware.

Plug-n-play simplicity itself --Windows handled it.

> Step 4: Download and install A/V software. Suffer 10% performance penalty until the end of time.

True. WMP is, in fact, inadequate. It's a little annoying to find and install all my favorite software (steps 4-10), but it's not as if I'm going to use/keep all the apps that ship with any distro either.

> Step 5: Download and install browser.
> Step 6: Download and install decent text editor.
> Step 7: Download and install cd burning software.
> Step 8: Download and install dvd playing software.
> Step 9: Download and install video software.
> Step 10: Download and install music playing software.
> Step 11: Disable tons of services in mmc services panel.

Agreed, step 11 sucks and belies a crap security model. But... It's also the flip side of having to enable tons of services.

Look... No OS is perfect, but it's so annoying the way Windoze, Apple, or Linux fanboys act like their shit don't stink. Please. Like everything else, there are pros and cons, with tradeoffs to be made with any OS. It may make you feel better to vent, but we've already heard it. We already know the million ways that Microsoft sucks. Save it for your blog or journal.

Re:Linux: Not There Yet

[Knuckles]

Step 1 - You either have SP2 or you don't. If you don't, install whatever version you have and download the update (that'll also cut down the number of reboots on step 2). If you're worried about viruses, download a freeware AV package before you do the update.

Are you insane? If you don't have SP2 and you are not in a secure network, then you are infected before you have finished a download. 12 minutes [crn.com] in 2005.

Re:fiesty isnt ready

[Knuckles]

ATi refuses to release basic specs for some cards (e.g., my X1300), so the free ati driver cannot support them. Just choose the proprietary ATi driver.

Re:Already a great experience by default

[Knuckles]

System|Help -> Search for "DVD" -> Follow simple instructions.

Re:Upgrade From Edgy?

[physicsnick]

The procedure's a bit different, but (assuming you stuck with the default KDE), then yes, it's essentially the same thing with Kubuntu; run K -> System -> Adept Manager, enable edgy-updates, update everything, then restart Adept Manager and a version upgrade will be offered.

Re:In all honesty..

[miro f]

* Upstart, makes boot time much faster.

well, I'm looking at /etc/event.d and I see they still have the old sysvinit compatibility scripts there. So upstart hasn't actually changed anything to do with boot time, the boot process is still exactly the same.