Ubuntu Linux

[WanderingKnight]

Is the open source driver is the one provided when i'm installing Ubuntu?

I'm not sure, but I'd say not. The open source driver is still in heavy development, IIRC. You should be able to download the latest version from ATI's website.

Of course, take what I say with a pinch of salt, since I use Nvidia and there's never been too much problem with their drivers.

[Furuno]

@ Miles Teg :
I know that, the problem is, video now won't play.

Update on my problem :
I've managed somehow so the video file can be openand. However, when i'm pushing the play button, it's not playing... some video would play for several seconds and then stop. However, i can "browse" the entire video frame (and view it as still image) by scrolling the ...umm what's that called... slider...

I've posted this on ubuntuforums.org too, but have no responds... So now i revert my xorg.conf and disabling the ATi driver to enable video / and opengl again at the cost of unable to resize video, very low FPS even when only showing a rotating cube, and nice "puni-puni" desktop effects... sigh...

I'd be very glad if anyone can help me troubleshoot this problem...

[Miles Teg]

I know that the "ATI" open source driver doesn't support 3D for the HD2XXX series, but you shouldn't have problem using the XV driver with MPlayer.

I can't really help you more since I have a nVidia card, and the ATI one I have on another computer is a Radeon 9200 who works perfectly with the open source driver.

Have you tried using the "restricted driver" program bundled with Ubuntu instead of installing the driver from AMD website ??

[Slice of Life]

To see explicitly if the xv driver works you can open a shell and type

mplayer -vo xv  <your anime>

Furthermore,

mplayer -vo x11 -zoom  <your anime>

should at least allow you to zoom.

If it doesn't work then maybe somebody has an idea if he sees the output.

[Furuno]

Thanks, everybody...

I've solved the problem, after reading a lot of forums and articles on the internet it seems that there's something wrong my build package and the xorg.conf. I've reinstalled Ubuntu (again, under windows) and then installing the driver with the already builded package (.deb, not running ./ati-catalys-8-5blabla.sh --buildpkg Ubuntu/8.04) i found somewhere on the net... Too bad, it's still Catalyst 8.4... Oh well...

Now glxgears runs flawlessly at 3100fps and video also run well with MPlayer. At least i can now switch to Ubuntu...

[hobbes_fan]

Well, I've had fun with two distros recently and I have to say the usability between 7.04 to 8.04 is excellent. I like the xubuntu version far more than the Ubuntu version, makes my ancient laptop seem like a viable multimedia editing tool despite being a lowly 1gb + 1.7 Centrino.. The command line isn't as necessary as 7.04 and the only time I've used it was to use gksu thunar as I didn't feel like typing a whole string of directories and subdirectories. A full install to complete was a pleasant surprise barely cracking 3.5gb. Granted this time around I installed it ona more Linux hardware friendly platform with no ATi and ndiswrapper driver required which soured me on my previous experience.

I just wonder why they chose Transmission as the official BT client when Deluge is just as easy to use and all the plugins available are much more useful. Also I'm using Mplayer and I just wonder why subs (.ass, no issues with .srt) tend to flicker.

DSL is also another distro that I've become a fan of. Really useful as a recovery tool and a great o/s for a pure torrent box. Makes anything look like a cannon of a system. I carry it around on a 1gb usb key and it really comes into its own as a recovery tool allowing for file recovery.

[WanderingKnight]

Also I'm using Mplayer and I just wonder why subs (.ass, no issues with .srt) tend to flicker.

I use mplayer, too, and .ass subs don't flicker at all. I've never seen that since I've started using Linux. Do you have mplayer configured to display .ass subs correctly?

Here's my ~/.mplayer/config file:

#font rendering options
sid=0
ass=1
embeddedfonts=1
correct-pts=1

[sa547]

I forgot to mention this yesterday: strangely, after installing the "non-free" nVidia drivers for my Kubuntu, some of the icons now sported an odd palette of yellow and blue, even though the rest of the interface looked normal.

Does it need a icon cache rebuild?

[hobbes_fan]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

I use mplayer, too, and .ass subs don't flicker at all. I've never seen that since I've started using Linux. Do you have mplayer configured to display .ass subs correctly?

Here's my ~/.mplayer/config file:

#font rendering options
sid=0
ass=1
embeddedfonts=1
correct-pts=1

I've had a play around with mplayer particularly the video codec section, after a couple of failures it seems to have corrected itself when I use the x11/xv video driver instead of the GL/GL2 drivers I was previously using.

EDIT: Time for more experimentation. I am planning to to a full HDD encryption using Truecrypt. However, I've got a number of active torrents running at the moment so I'm not sure If I should undertake this while these are in progress or I should do so when they have finished. Also, using a Ubuntu derivative I should be fine using the Ubuntu x86 .deb compile correct?

[AquaMethod]

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

EDIT: Time for more experimentation. I am planning to to a full HDD encryption using Truecrypt. However, I've got a number of active torrents running at the moment so I'm not sure If I should undertake this while these are in progress or I should do so when they have finished. Also, using a Ubuntu derivative I should be fine using the Ubuntu x86 .deb compile correct?

Will Truecrypt do full drive encryption for Linux now? I'm pretty sure it was Windows only when Truecrypt 5 came out. Does it still write to track 0 of the drive and use a pre-boot authentication screen and everything? If so, that'd be pretty cool. Now they just need an EFI version...

But yeah, if it works like its Windows counterpart, it shouldn't matter if you're writing to the drive while it encrypts. Truecrypt has a pretty sophisticated driver for that on the Windows side.

[hobbes_fan]

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

Will Truecrypt do full drive encryption for Linux now? I'm pretty sure it was Windows only when Truecrypt 5 came out. Does it still write to track 0 of the drive and use a pre-boot authentication screen and everything? If so, that'd be pretty cool. Now they just need an EFI version...

But yeah, if it works like its Windows counterpart, it shouldn't matter if you're writing to the drive while it encrypts. Truecrypt has a pretty sophisticated driver for that on the Windows side.

Ah crap. Looks like it can't. I may just partition the drive 20/80 into system and docs/files and just encrypt that partition instead.

Although I need to read up on LUKS as well which seems an alternative

[AquaMethod]

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

Ah crap. Looks like it can't. I may just partition the drive 20/80 into system and docs/files and just encrypt that partition instead.

Although I need to read up on LUKS as well which seems an alternative

Is there anything specific that you want to encrypt? It seems like it'd be much easier to just create a Truecrypt virtual disk and put anything sensitive into it. I just hate partitioning Unix systems into data/system pairs, because it makes backup a lot less painless (unless you keep your home folder on the system partition, of course).

[SeijiSensei]

Why not just create an encrypted partition and mount it as /home?

I actually find segregating /home (and often /var as well) much more useful than having them all on the same filesystem. Since I expect to change the system partition from time to time, having a separate /home partition makes things much easier. (In actual fact, my /home resides on an NFS server, but that's because I'm not using a laptop.) Having /var separated can be helpful on servers because that's where most of the disk activity occurs (databases, logging, mail, etc.). That way if all that thrashing takes down the partition assigned to /var you can restore without having to reinstall.

[hobbes_fan]

The laptop is also a work pc as well. As an OH&S consultant it has structural photos of the inside of buildings and some general, basic employee health and contact details, that I download onto the laptop when I do site inspections. As well as any recorded interviews I make. Some sites I visit are fairly sensitive, so I'd like to secure any data I have on a portable device.

[grey_moon]

If you are using Ubuntu then if u install from the alt cd then it is really easy to set up FDE from the install. I'd recommend creating the whole disk as a encrypted partition, then creating a LVM and finally your root, swap and home with in the LVM. That way your swap isn't vulnerable and also you can unlock your lappie with a single password. TC 5.1a has no FDE for nix and is a bit slow on large files with the Ubuntu stock kernel (there is something on their site about upgrading to the latest, personally I use 4.1).

Most important thing is to make sure u regularly back up.

[Furuno]

Umm... Is there any mean to be able to play video or any OpenGL application while keep the Compiz on without have that image flickering?

I've noticed that playing .mkv video with Totem (with GStreamer) is OK. But, is there's any other way? Since I'm frequently using OpenGL apps (when developing a game)...

[Kovensky]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

I use mplayer, too, and .ass subs don't flicker at all. I've never seen that since I've started using Linux. Do you have mplayer configured to display .ass subs correctly?

My subs flicker too. I fixed that by using "-vf ass,scale".

[Vexx]

I'm a bit stumped (and embarrassed) but I'm having no luck getting Ubuntu Linux (Heron desktop) and its wizards to cooperate properly with my Linksys Wireless-G card on my Thinkpad.

The GUI tools see the card, it registers it and provides it as a choice in networking..... but doesn't adjust the network config files or route table. When I try to manually alter those tables... the wizards helpfully screw things up the next time I try to use it.

Not necessarily looking for a solution (still tinkering myself) - just wondering if anyone else is encountering this sort of nonsense. I've been using all the 'wireless card' help files I can find and have even tried a couple of other Linksys cards (just in case this brand new one was bad).

It is a WPC54G ver. 3 card. Everything else in the Thinkpad works beautifully (lan, modem, usb, etc).

EDIT: apparently... even with ndiswrapper, Linksys cards are flaky as hell. Most of the sites I've visited recommend certain Netgear cards (Broadcom chips) instead.

[IRJustman]

Well, just wrapped up installing Kubuntu on my Dell Inspiron 9100 on a spare drive I had lying around.

This one was a challenge because I had a busted DVD burner, so I couldn't either boot discs burned by my desktop, nor worse, I couldn't burn the ISO under Windows. The actuator mechanism which moves the emitter/detector assembly broke, so it wouldn't track properly. This is further complicated by the fact that apparently, netbooting is apparently broken under Hardy according to the Wiki.

Anyway, I end up installing the netboot package for Gutsy Gibbon onto my fileserver in the TFTP boot directory, then make sure DHCP and TFTP are working on another segment of my network, which I have VLANned off so it doesn't interfere with my normal network (I'll save explanation for a later post). I then set another port to see the "installation VLAN" so I could plug it in and PXE boot the laptop.

Installation goes practically flawlessly. Once done, I move the cable to another port on my switch which places it on my normal intranet. I then do a do-release-upgrade so I can go to Hardy. It pulls down all the packages as it should, but it hangs on the locales. I end up rebooting the machine and configuring much of the system by hand after a few reboots while the locale compiler was sitting there figuring out what to do. Thankfully, from the outset, I had it in mind to install a VERY minimal system so I would only have to upgrade just the core OS install and not the GUI (which would have likely left a LOT of cruft lying around).

And a tip for the wise: If you have a Broadcom wireless adapter in your laptop, you need to work a little more because Broadcom does not want the "firmware" (more accurately, it's more like "microcode") for their wireless adapter being distributed with Linux distros. Since I have a lot of command-line experience, this is pretty easy, though I have to build one of the utilities on another computer because I keep getting gcc ICEs (Internal Compiler Errors, usually a bus error or a segmentation fault, indicating bum RAM). I get the necessary files which contain the firmware and a program which extracts said firmware, depositing it in a location of choice. Overall, this goes quite well, though I have not tried wireless just yet.

The next step is installing Kubuntu Desktop, which I elect to use version 4. With a console still open, I fire up taskman, tell it to install Kubuntu based on KDE4. Things install pretty smoothly. I then fire KDE up so I can log in and see how things work. Everything fires right up as it should.

There's even a little widget in the task bar which allows you to set up "proprietary drivers". My system has two devices which require proprietary drivers to work their best, the aforementioned Broadcom-based Dell wireless mini-PCI card and the Mobility Radeon 9700. Enabled it and rebooted the machine. During the reboot process, I availed myself of the opportunity to disable PXE booting now that the core system is now installed. Had to apt-get install mesa-utils so I could see how things were going. glxinfo says that I have hardware 3D acceleration, plus glxgears also runs with full hardware acceleration.

About the only thing not working on video right now is Xv acceleration (for video overlay). I know that it's an option in the config (I ran an ATI card in another computer in the past and had to do some very minor footwork to get it working); I'm concentrating on getting the core system up and running presently and will work this detail out later.

I also enabled the "hardy-backports" repo so I can keep more current than the default install does (apparently, new upstream stuff goes into the -upstream repositories), then did an apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade. Stuff gets upgraded.

Then I apt-get installed firefox and flashplugin-nonfree, along with a few recommended packages, mostly fonts, including the default Microsoft ones. After stuff gets installed, I run Firefox and hit YouTube to see how things work. I hit a few pages which happen to have Japanese in them. Much to my pleasure, things render VERY nicely out of the box.

As of now, I still need to install a lot of "normal" apps, such as OpenOffice.org and the like, then add medibuntu repos so I can install all the usual media-playing applications. The media keys on my laptop don't work just yet, but that's a minor thing. I also still need to test wireless now that the microcode has been extracted, then subsequently loaded into the wireless interface. While it notices the Bluetooth interface I installed recently, I don't know whether the default kubuntu-kde4-desktop installs userland KDE Bluetooth utilities by default. Once installed, just need to test.

Beyond that, since this is also a working computer, I need to get a few other items, like a TFTP server and other programs I use as a network consultant, like iptraf, trafshow, Wireshark, and others.

Overall, had it not been for my busted DVD burner, I would probably have had a far more complete installation, including Bluetooth support. But I still managed to get much of my system up and running on my own without too much intervention. Until I get a working drive in my possession, I will likely have to do a lot more work to get everything else working. However, things have worked out very well thus far given my circumstances.

Will report back with more stuff as I go.

--Ian.

[IRJustman]

Originally Posted by Vexx

EDIT: apparently... even with ndiswrapper, Linksys cards are flaky as hell. Most of the sites I've visited recommend certain Netgear cards (Broadcom chips) instead.

Really? Did you have to get microcode for the card you have? Plus in my case, I'm planning on installing a miniPCI card so I can use my PCMCIA/CardBus slot for something else. And I'm gonna completely AVOID anything with BCM chipsets which require this kind of crap (hopefully, their newer stuff doesn't require me to do what I did to get microcode for my current wireless interface).

--Ian.