manthano

This post is pretty much a reply to previous one. I was able to get a lot of the remaining issues I had with Linux fixed last night.

Boot XP from grub - check.
Had to add the following line to the /boot/grub/menu.lst under Windows XP before “chainloader +1″
map (hd1) (hd0)
I also changed root (hd1,0) to rootnoverify (hd1,0) but I’m not sure if that makes a difference or not…

Get programs from universe and multiverse - check.
Not too difficult, but had to enable the correct repositories and then set up the proxy. I was then able to get Mozilla Thunderbird installed, however I’ll probably manually install the newer version, 1.5 later.

Install fonts, particularly Verdana - check.
With the universe and multiverse enabled, I was then able to download msttfonts, which includes Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman, etc. All the standard windows fonts that I’m used to. Getting this done was a bit more tricky though. I had to configure the proxy, not only in Synaptic Package Manager, but also in a the wget file. I also needed the cabinstall package to get the fonts to work.

So that’s all good for now, I’ll see what I learn next…

Finally! I was able to get ubuntu installed on my new external hard drive. It wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be due to two problems. (Problems on my end, not w/ ubuntu)

First, I had a problem w/ my screen, which i mentioned before. Turns out it was just a loose connection between my screen and motherboard. So that's been fixed. (Free service is really nice.)

Now for problem two… Getting Linux (grub specifically) to play nice w/ a USB hard drive. Thankfully, these problems were easily resolved with a step-by-step guide at ubuntuforums.org. It took about an hour to get it installed. And then another hour to figure out few tweaks (get the middle button on my Thinkpad trackpoint to work, install Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5). And in the process of doing that I began learning about using the command line and Linux permissions. Good stuff. So everything is up and running just great.

There are still a few things on the Linux to-do list… Be able to boot Win XP from grub, get some programs from the universe and multiverse, add some fonts (I wonder if Verdana works in Linux…), and a few other miscellaneous things. But that gives me something fun to work on in between school. (Not that school's not fun, but you know…)

One of my favorite Firefox extensions, Web Developer just came out with a 1.0 version. I guess that means it's out beta now. If you do any kind of webdesign, or are curious about creating web pages, this extension is a must have. Some key features include…

• Live editing of CSS and (x)HTML
• CSS, RSS, and (x)HTML validation
• Resizing and hiding images
• Displaying element information (CSS attributes, parameters, topography, containers, etc.
• And tons more…

And since I'm talking about Firefox extensions, I might as well mention a few other of my favorites…

• IEtab - Never click on the "blue e" again! Keep Internet Exploiter, Exploder hidden on your system and for those few site that need it (Micro$oft Update, pages w/ activeX controls) view IE inside of Firefox. (Note: use this extension with care as it still has all the security problems IE does)
• Adblock or Adblock Plus - Get rid of popups, in-page ads, undesireable images, flash animation, iframes, and just about any other type of embeded media. Make sure you use this in conjunction with Adblock Filterset.G Updater. This other handy extension imports a whole list of filters (including several using regular expressions) to automatically block most unwanted ads.
• Remove it Permanently - this extension removes ads and media like Adblock, but it does a whole more. It can also remove text! Just select something, right-click, selete RIP and never see it again. This comes in handy when site are content w/ just displaying an ad, but they have to put ADVERTISEMENT surrounding it.
• A mouse gestures extension - there are serveral out there, but get one, because it speeds up browsing a whole lot!

Do you have any extensions you can't live without? Leave a comment and let me know about them. I used to browse through the whole list periodically, but its gotten too big now, and there are more sites that have them than just addons.mozilla.org.

Sweet and sleek. And silent. That about sums up my favorite Christmas present - a Western Digital 80GB external hard drive. I used some money from my parents and grandparents to purchase it on newegg.com. As this is my first experience with them, I was pleased to find the service as good as I had anticipated from hearing about from friends. (ordered 12/27 around 10pm, had it by noon 12/29).

I was able to get it formatted this morning using Windows Disk Manager for lack of anything better. So I now have a ~10 GB unformatted partition for Linux (more on that in a moment), a ~30 GB FAT32 partition for Linux and M$ Windows to share, and a ~40GB NTFS partition for M$ Windows backup purposes.

So now I'm ready to install Linux… sort of. I got the Ubuntu CDs from a guy at school (livecd and install cd) but I'm having a problem with, I'm guessing, x-server configuration. I put the livecd in, went through the all the configuration stuff, and everything looks great until it done and goes into GNOME. Then the screen just flashes like crazy, and it's mostly black. I can't see enough to click anything and Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn't seem to do anything (not sure if that's even used in linux), so I do a hard power-off (hold power button of my laptop in for 5+ secs).

I did some googling and also some searching at the ubuntu forums, and came up with a couple ideas. I tried the livecd again, and instead of just hitting Enter at the boot promt, I typed in "live-expert" (minus the quotes) and then hit enter. I select the defaults for everything until i get to the x-server configuration. Then instead of the default selected "vesa" driver, i selected "ati" (I have a ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card - it came w/ my laptop), I also changed the default screen resolution from something like 1500×1400 to 1024×768 instead. I select everything else default and this time everything behaves fine… at least at first. The screen doesn't flash and I can see the desktop and everything (why brown?? ugh!!). But then the screen starts acting up, and gets progressively worse. First there's just litte horizontal black and white lines around the edge of the cursor or any open windows, but then it got worse, and the screen started flashing again. I quickly logged out while i could still see enough to do stuff.

So that's where I'm stuck right now. If any of you linux gurus out there have any ideas, leave a comment and let me know. At least for now anyway, I'm stuck with Window$ as my sole OS. I've had similar problems with the Knoppix CD, too.

My system specs if this helps any…

Thinkpad R40 2723-6XU
Intel Centrino 1.3 MHz processor
Windows XP Pro SP2 w/ all the latest drivers and updates (as far as I know)
256MB RAM
ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card

Yeah, Firefox! The official time was was Oct 19 2005 1:13:40pm EST. Join the celebration at the newly restored spreadfirefox.com!