The fglrx driver for ATI graphics cards has finally been made available for Intrepid, so I gave it a shot on my Inspiron 1501. On the whole, it's a lot faster and smoother than the open source radeon driver and doesn't leave you with the ugly but momentary artifacts on the screen. Nice.
Unfortunately though it breaks suspend and hibernate, so until ATI can work out the bugs, I'll just have to slog along with the open source driver.
Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Morning After
Hmmm. Maybe I was a bit rash in installing Intrepid so soon... I only have two major complaints. One really. The problem is this. None of the things I actually installed Intrepid for seem to work properly anymore, or in some cases at all, except for the tabs in Nautilus. As I'm not doing any coding at the moment, I'm not really needing them that much anyway.
Suspend and Hibernate are still no-go. The package in my bug report has been changed to acpi-support, but no progress that I know of yet. No comments etc except for my own. Network Manager is also playing up a fair bit. I don't have to kill the process anymore to get it working again, but it won't store a WEP key in the Password Manager, with the result that the key needs to be supplied every time you log in and sometimes several times again after that! Sometimes it will duplicate the wifi profile as well and then refuse to log in at all, no matter how many times you supply the key. The solution I came upon for the duplication issue is to delete all copies of the wifi profile. One correct profile will then 'appear' with the old settings intact. Alas, no WEP key. Afer reading the bug reports, I still can't seem to make out whether it's a Network Manager issue or Password Manager fouling things up.
Suspend and Hibernate are still no-go. The package in my bug report has been changed to acpi-support, but no progress that I know of yet. No comments etc except for my own. Network Manager is also playing up a fair bit. I don't have to kill the process anymore to get it working again, but it won't store a WEP key in the Password Manager, with the result that the key needs to be supplied every time you log in and sometimes several times again after that! Sometimes it will duplicate the wifi profile as well and then refuse to log in at all, no matter how many times you supply the key. The solution I came upon for the duplication issue is to delete all copies of the wifi profile. One correct profile will then 'appear' with the old settings intact. Alas, no WEP key. Afer reading the bug reports, I still can't seem to make out whether it's a Network Manager issue or Password Manager fouling things up.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Installed Intrepid Ibex Alpha 6 on my Inspiron 1501
Just installed Intrepid on my dell. Started out as just a test install in an extra partition, but I liked it so much, I replaced Hardy with it.
The main points in Intrepid's favour were: suspend and hibernate worked great (please note past tense), the improvements in the Network Manager which mean I can now use it for wifi without crashing things and tabs in Nautilus.
The system is still a little bit of a jumble, as you'd expect from an Alpha, but seems steady enough to use as my main OS.
Suspend and hibernate were working on the initial installation using kernel 2.6.27-3, but is no longer working due to a suspected regression in 2.6.27-4. There also seems to be a driver issue of some sort. See my bug report on launchpad.
Network manager is advancing at a great rate. Mark Shuttleworth's ambition or having constant internet wherever and whenever is looking like becoming a reality. This is also the first time that I have been able to use Network Manager to connect to wifi without crashing things. No more wifi-radar! One issue with the wifi on the 1501 was that the drivers would not install through apt or the Hardware Drivers manager. I installed the windows driver using ndiswrapper and the guide here.
Finally to tabs in Nautilus. Gotta love it. I had a long convo with the Nautilus developers in Aug 2007 about tab support and was told pretty much that it would happen when hell freezes over, that I could write my own code if I wanted, but I wouldn't get any help and it wouldn't be implemented anyway. Great. I used pcmanfm instead. Well, I don't see any ice creeping up from the deeps and I'm using tabs in Nautilus. Seriously though, a big well-done to the Nautilus developers. They put in a lot of work and it's a great feature.
That's all for now. Back to the essay I'm supposed to be doing...
The main points in Intrepid's favour were: suspend and hibernate worked great (please note past tense), the improvements in the Network Manager which mean I can now use it for wifi without crashing things and tabs in Nautilus.
The system is still a little bit of a jumble, as you'd expect from an Alpha, but seems steady enough to use as my main OS.
Suspend and hibernate were working on the initial installation using kernel 2.6.27-3, but is no longer working due to a suspected regression in 2.6.27-4. There also seems to be a driver issue of some sort. See my bug report on launchpad.
Network manager is advancing at a great rate. Mark Shuttleworth's ambition or having constant internet wherever and whenever is looking like becoming a reality. This is also the first time that I have been able to use Network Manager to connect to wifi without crashing things. No more wifi-radar! One issue with the wifi on the 1501 was that the drivers would not install through apt or the Hardware Drivers manager. I installed the windows driver using ndiswrapper and the guide here.
Finally to tabs in Nautilus. Gotta love it. I had a long convo with the Nautilus developers in Aug 2007 about tab support and was told pretty much that it would happen when hell freezes over, that I could write my own code if I wanted, but I wouldn't get any help and it wouldn't be implemented anyway. Great. I used pcmanfm instead. Well, I don't see any ice creeping up from the deeps and I'm using tabs in Nautilus. Seriously though, a big well-done to the Nautilus developers. They put in a lot of work and it's a great feature.
That's all for now. Back to the essay I'm supposed to be doing...
Friday, October 19, 2007
Updating from Ubuntu Feisty to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on a Dell Inspiron 1501
I've been using Ubuntu Linux for a couple of years now, first on a state-of-the-ark IBM tower a mate gave me in 1st yr and more recently on a Dell Inspiron 1501 I got a few weeks ago.
I'd set up apache2 on my 1501 for serving local web apps I'm playing with, as well as a few other adaptations to the standard setup and didn't want to lose all my hard work, so I opted an online upgrade.
Here's how:
In the Synaptic Repositories, remove the 3rd party sources at medibuntu if you've installed the dvd codecs that way, then go to the Preferences/Sessions dialog and remove "compiz --replace" from the startup list if you've included it. Log out and then log back in.
Upgrade using the Update Manager.
When you restart, do no log into your normal XGL session, it is no longer recommended. Log into a normal Gnome session instead and make that default.
Enable the Restricted Drivers for the Radeon card, log out, log in again.
In the Appearance Dialog, hit the Visual Effects tab, make your selection (I recommend 'Custom') and then hit the Preferences button to open Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.
You may find that Preferences / Advanced Desktop Effects Settings no longer works, if it doesn't, reinstall it using Synaptic (gnome-compiz-manager)
From there, all that is needed is to set your preferences and enjoy! Wifi, bluetooth (if you use a bluetooth dongle install obexpushd) etc all run out of the box, so well done to the Ubuntu team!
I'd set up apache2 on my 1501 for serving local web apps I'm playing with, as well as a few other adaptations to the standard setup and didn't want to lose all my hard work, so I opted an online upgrade.
Here's how:
In the Synaptic Repositories, remove the 3rd party sources at medibuntu if you've installed the dvd codecs that way, then go to the Preferences/Sessions dialog and remove "compiz --replace" from the startup list if you've included it. Log out and then log back in.
Upgrade using the Update Manager.
When you restart, do no log into your normal XGL session, it is no longer recommended. Log into a normal Gnome session instead and make that default.
Enable the Restricted Drivers for the Radeon card, log out, log in again.
In the Appearance Dialog, hit the Visual Effects tab, make your selection (I recommend 'Custom') and then hit the Preferences button to open Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.
You may find that Preferences / Advanced Desktop Effects Settings no longer works, if it doesn't, reinstall it using Synaptic (gnome-compiz-manager)
From there, all that is needed is to set your preferences and enjoy! Wifi, bluetooth (if you use a bluetooth dongle install obexpushd) etc all run out of the box, so well done to the Ubuntu team!
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