Open Source and the Magic LAMP

Is it a Gift – or a Curse?

Added 1/12/2010 – Definitely a gift. I’m loving life on this laptop with Ubuntu. All is well. Other than needing to install the Realtek Wireless LAN driver – see below – I’m in karmic with the latest kernel and couldn’t be happier.

Two weeks ago I got an early Chanukah present – A Toshiba Satellite A505-S6981 Laptop. I’ve never gotten, nor purchased, a Windows laptop outside of a work related engagement.  This one came pre-installed with Windows Home Premium 7.  My plan was to have a duel boot setup – Windows + Ubuntu. Simple enough.

Note: As of 1/12/2010 I got rid of Windows. Everything works so well in Ubuntu now on the laptop, there’s no need.

When I opened the box I couldn’t find the Windows install disk.  I needed it. Aaarrrggg.  I called the vendor.  Where was it? I was told Windows laptops have not shipped with install disks for the past three years. But there is the option to burn the the OS when you start up the laptop.  OK, no biggie.

I started up the laptop and performed what I thought was an OS burn but what turned out to be a 6 DVD backup. Turns out I had to shell out about $100 for the OEM DVD. 6 coasters and a partridge in a pear tree.

Before I took the plunge (by the way here’s a great guide on creating a Windows 7 / Ubuntu 9.10 duel boot). I did some googeling to make sure I could run Ubuntu on the laptop.  I saw the list of Linux supported Toshiba laptops. My model wasn’t exactly on it but . . look . . here’s Toshiba’s Linux Support Portal!  Good enough for me.

Why be wireless?

It was all smooth sailing as long as I was hard wired into the network.  In order to get my Realtek wireless LAN happening, I needed to install a driver.  After two days of searching, including finding out ndswrapper isn’t 64bit friendly I found this page.  It was my beacon of hope.

Here’s what needs to be done:

1. Download the driver.
2. Download this patch.
3. su yourself into root userdom
4. Extract driver.
5. Run the patch file with the command patch -p0<rtl8192se_091211.patch
6. cd into the driver dir
7. type make
8. type make install

Reboot and you should see a list of available networks in the Network Manager.  If not, check out that link I mentioned above for answers.

Its important to note I had all of the default Ubuntu software repositories activated. I ran updates regularly.  This fixed problems I ran into.  For information on how to set this up, click here.

Note: The following issues are no longer plaguing me. I have a Vizio 37″ HDTV that works just fine connected via HDMI.

HDM-oh my what resolution is that?

I was sooo psyched to see that HDMI port on the laptop.  I’ve got an AppleTV, Roxio and a PS3. Its not enough.  I want more.  I joined laptop to my lousy CRT HDTV with a too short HDMI cable and pulled up hulu.com.  I experienced double frustration being in an uncomfortable position and noticing the Display Manager did not recognize the 1900×1200 monitor.

The handy lspci command shows that this laptop model has the:

Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

I needed a driver.  Luckily there’s a repo for that. Here’s how its done:

To add this repository, go to System > Administration > Software Sources, click on the second tab: “Third-party Software”, and add these:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Now import the PGP key for this repository, using the following command:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8844C542

Then go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for ‘intel’.  You can also restrict the results to the xorg-edgers repo. Grab your drivers.

I wish I could say this fixed the problem.

I further googled and tried messing with the xorg.conf and xrandr but didn’t get anywhere.  If your brave you can delve deeper. More info here.  Note that this problem does not occur in Windows so I have to alternate OS’ when I want to watch that episode of House I missed.  If anyone has solved this problem LET ME KNOW!

Life was pretty good.  For a while.  Then as luck would have it, I would need to install an app for a (potential) work related situation that was only supported on the Windows and CentOS / Red Hat platforms.  I backed up my files and got ready to switch to CentOS5 . . .

Note: I’ve got a CentOS5 Cloud Server now.  I don’t recommend running CentOS5 64 bit as a Desktop OS.  If you want to run desktop and server apps together, try Fedora.