Tag Archives: ubuntu

The author of the Windows file copy dialog visits some friends

Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix (with Jaunty) on an MSI Wind

I recently picked up a MSI Wind Netbook and love the damn thing. Ubuntu Netbook Remix brings in a great UI which makes navigating on the small screen much easier.I used Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 4 as the base install, mainly because I didn’t want to go through the trouble of converting my ext3 partitions to ext4 when it comes out on April 23rd, and the driver support is more complete.  I haven’t had many problems with it aside from a few random firefox crashes.


  1. We’re going to make a bootable USB stick to install Ubuntu
  2. On a separate machine, Download the cd image.  If you want to use 8.10, get the iso here 
  3. if you are already using an Ubuntu install of 8.10 or higher, skip to step 11
  4. burn the image to a cd
  5. Boot to the cd, do not install, load the demo OS
  6. click System->Administration->Create a USB startup disk
  7. point it to either the cd in your drive, or the iso
  8. point to the correct USB stick
  9. the rest of the settings can stay default
  10. click Make Startup Disk
  11. Insert the usb drive into your wind, power it on, and hit delete to go into the bios, change the first boot device to USB Drive
  12. save and exit the bios
  13. If the wind boots off of the USB stick correctly, you should see the same screen as when you had booted off the cd
  14. Install Ubuntu
  15. I made my partitions as follows:
    |30 gig recovery partition|20 gig XP partition|15 Gig Ext4 Ubuntu Partition|4 gig swap partition|the rest of the drive as an ext4 partition
  16. That last partition is where I will mount my home directory, as well as mount from windows xp using ext2fs (I havn’t actually tried this yet)
  17. Add the netbook remix repositories to your system.  This can be be done in synaptic or by typing the following into a terminal
    sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
  18. add the following:
    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu intrepid main
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu intrepid main
  19. sudo apt-get update
  20. sudo apt-get install go-home-applet
    sudo apt-get install window-picker-applet
    sudo apt-get install maximus
    sudo apt-get install human-netbook-theme 
  21. Select the “Human Netbook Theme” in System Preferences>Apperance
  22. go into System Preferences-> sessions->startup programs and confirm that “Maximus” and “window-picker-applet” are thre
  23. Disable Compiz Effects System Preferences->Appearance->None

    This is what is required to get netbook remix running, I continued with the following to tweak it some more
     

  24. Delete the bottom panel by right clicking on it
  25. Delete all the applets on the top panel by right clicking on them
  26. Add applets to the top panel so it ends up like:
    Window Picker Applet | Trash Can |Notification Area | MixerApplet | Clock
  27. I also made alt+q the hotkey to show the desktop, makes navigating to it faster. Another option is the show desktop applet button that can be added to the top bar.  Preferences->keyboard shortcuts->”Hide all normal windows…..”

    More info is available here.

The Matrix Runs on Windows

Set / Change / Reset the MySQL root password on Ubuntu Linux (Ubuntu)

This came in veeeerrryyy handy just now…

  1. Stop the MySQL Server

    sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
     

  2. Start the mysqld config

    sudo mysqld –skip-grant-tables &

  3. Login to the server as root

    mysql -u root mysql

  4. Ser your NEWPASSWORD

    UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD(‘NEWPASSWORD’) WHERE User=’root’; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit;

How to stream video to an Xbox 360 from linux

There are a couple of different methods floating around to do this, but I think this is the quickest and easiest to get set up. So far, I like this better then FTP’ing files over to my old modded xbox. Some notes about further investigating will be at the bottom. Note: this was tested on an Ubuntu machine.

  • Make sure your 360 has all the current updates
  • Install ushare

    “sudo apt-get install ushare”

  • if ushare complains about a missing libdlna dependency, get it from here: “wget http://www.geexbox.org/debian/pool/main/libdlna/libdlna0_0.2.3-0ubuntu1_i386.deb”

  • Edit the ushare configuration

    “sudo vim /etc/ushare.conf”

    update any ports or network devices you need to (I changed mine to eth1 so it would just use the wireless) as well as what folder to scan

  • There is a mime-type you need to update

    “sudo vim /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml”

    change mime-type type=”video/x-msvideo” to mime-type type=”video/x-ms-wmv”

  • restart gnome (ctrl + alt + backspace)
  • start ushare with “ushare -x”
  • Go to the media blade on your 360 dashboard
  • Press ‘X’ to change the source
  • You should see uShare (or whatever you named the share to in the configuration)
  • play videos!
  • note: to play a .mkv file, rename it to .m4v
  • To Do:

    • get uShare to automatically rescan the directory (currently if I add a video to the folder, the 360 will not see it until i restart uShare)
    • get 1080p HD content to stream. I have tried a few re-encapsulation methods so far, nothing working yet
    • this is an xbox thing, that hopefully will be fixed in the fall update, but navigating large folder trees can get annoying

Adobe AIR Beta Now Available for Linux

Adobe air is out of alpha and can be downloaded here. Also check out Life Hacker’s top 10 apps worth installing Adobe AIR for

Wine 1.0 has been released

Big Day for software

Distributing Ubuntu

… is much better then Windows ;-)

In other news: I requested my Hardy Heron dvd =)

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