racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Last week I ditched Beryl in favor of Compiz Fusion. While Beryl effects are really slick, what I’m really after is the productivity boost I get with being able to manage windows and workflows more efficiently. For instance, I like how I can group windows, and how I can use different faces of the desktop cube for different window/task groups. And I particularly like the OSX Expose-like “Scale” functionality. The zoom functionality is also useful when making presentations.

However, I found Beryl to be quite unstable at times. It’s great that Compiz and the Beryl (a fork project of Compiz) had merged into Compiz Fusion. I would expect better stability and new functionalities and that’s just what I got. And they’re actually still in beta. I hear they will release a stable edition later this year.

Some screencaps. Oh, pardon the OSX-like theme. I was trying out some eye candy, and since I’m used to my Mac’s look, I guess it helps to have a more or less uniform look.

The desktop cube in action

The Expose-like Scale feature

Expo is much like the Desktop Wall feature. One thing I don’t like with Desktop Wall is that it conflicts with Desktop Cube. So it’s great to have Expo along with Desktop Cube (you can move windows across the different faces easily just by dragging).

Compiz Fusion’s settings manager has less customization abilities than Beryl, though, but I guess that’s a good tradeoff if you’re after stability. And it’s still not a final/finished product (active development is ongoing). So you can still expect more. Check out a guide for installing Compiz Fusion on Ubuntu Feisty here. I hear Compiz Fusion is included by default in the next release of Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon).

If you want to skip the long story and go straight to the fix, click here.

I’ve been a Windows guy for most of my computing life (I have used DOS, of course, then desQview on top of that, and then Windows 3.1 onwards). Then I got hooked on the Mac. Since then, my computing was split between Windows and OS X, with the Mac dominating sometimes, and PC the rest of the time. When I got my PC laptop back from the service center (with a lot of parts being replaced at the tail-end of warranty period) I shifted my preference toward PC. But I wanted something more, and Windows XP just didn’t cut it.

Sure, it was stable (as how I usually build up my machines), but after a year of every day wear and tear, XP was starting to slow down.

So I took the plunge and installed Linux on My Presario V2000.

It’s not actually my first time to explore Linux, as I may have mentioned before. I used to use Linux on my work machine back in the corporate world (cost saving measures, and because some tech companies tend to have this preference for open source). I tried running Ubuntu on all my laptops so far using the Live distribution CD (from 5.10, to 6.06 LTS, and now 7.04, a.k.a. “Feisty Fawn”). I even ran 6.06 on my PowerBook the first time I got it, since the pre-installed OS X release was 10.1, and it didn’t support some of my devices, such as the Cardbus wireless adapter. But that’s not the same as actually installing it and using it as your main OS.It’s only now that I’ve committed Linux to my laptop.

So here are some thoughts about blogging on Linux, and Linux in general.

A quick comparison

First off, a comparison among Windows, Linux and the Mac, from my perspective. That means someone who’s not really a hardcore hacker, and someone who’s not exactly an idiot, either. I’m an enthusiast who loves to explore, but I don’t have the time to do uber-serious tweaking. I just want something that works.

Windows XP – Seems to be a reliable and stable OS–that is, if you know how to secure yourself from malware. XP is solid as a rock as long as you prioritize security, meaning you’ve installed a good Antivirus (AVG recommended), anti-spyware (such as Spybot S & D), and you let auto-update do its thing. Of course, there’s the human aspect, so security doesn’t preclude your being victim to social engineering attacks.

Don’t even ask me about Vista (I’ve used it, but I’m not about to install Vista on any of my computers anytime soon).

OS X – It just effin’ works. I hope that’s enough said, but then again to the uninitiated, OS X was supposed to be designed from ground up by Apple to work 100% well with Apple hardware. So there should be no glitches, hardware incompatibilities, and other such difficulties you might expect with an OS of wide distribution like Windows.

The Mac is supposed to be simple and straightforward enough for a dummy user to use. But it also accommodates the more advanced users–it’s a UNIX-like operating system, after all. I’ve had my share of command-line hacking and tweaking via Terminal, myself. So basically, it’s a solid, secure UNIX-based operating system with great eye candy for a user interface. Actually, the GUI is not all eye-candy. There are usability and efficiency concerns, too. Like Expose is not only supposed to be a beautiful way of switching across windows. You can make your workflow more productive and efficient with it.

Linux – It’s the OS for enthusiasts. Frankly, I’ve tried a handful of distributions in my life (including Red Hat, Mandrake / Mandriva, Slackware, and even locally-developed Bayanihan Linux, and as well as several live CD distros like Damn Small Linux and Knoppix), but none have been desktop- and laptop-ready as Ubuntu.

By this, I mean Ubuntu is the only distro I’ve encountered so far that a user can just pop into his computer, install, and run without much trouble.

Of course, this is relative. Sure, you will still encounter some incompatibilities, and you still have to tweak configurations and install patches. But compared to other distros, this one is less of a hassle. Great thing with most distros is that as long as you’re online you could download or install updates straight off the web (like with apt-get). You’ll have to spend some time searching for fixes to problems or issues, though.

I could go on and on, but that would be too much rambling on my part (and something that I would rather not do, as you would read further on).

Blogging about Linux

Now the thing with using Linux is that you would inevitably have to get online to read up on blogs, forums, bug reports, and other such online resources. That’s because you will encounter some glitches one time or another. And these are usually fixed either by updating your OS, or applying fixes/patches, or fixing something that doesn’t work natively–meaning a hardware incompatibility or unsupported hardware/devices.

For instance, I was really amazed by how Ubuntu Feisty got to detect all my hardware, including the built-in Intel Pro 2200BG wireless card. On Windows, I had to download and install drivers from Intel before this worked (silly, eh?). Same with audio and video drivers. Ubuntu worked like a charm when I first ran it. Windows XP needed specific drivers for the Intel 915GM chipset for video and the sound, and these I had to download from HP and Intel.

So here’s an observation I have with bloggers who blog about Linux (I’m generalizing here). Most of the time, the posts are about:

* Comparison between their experiences with Linux and other OSes, like Windows.
* How-tos, hacks, and fixes, like how to make incompatible or unsupported devices work.
* Bashing other OSes, or telling the world how better off they are with Linux than other OSes.

Okay, I guess I’ve adequately met most of these criteria. Now on to the fix.

ACPI and Network Manager Fix

While Ubuntu was generally able to detect my hardware and use the appropriate drivers (where Windows failed to do automatically), I still faced several issues. One, whenever I woke up the laptop from sleep, my wireless networking will not always turn on. In fact, sometimes, Network Manager would just stop working, and I would have to restart the computer just to get WiFi and wired networking back on.

I added a few scripts that forced Network Manager off before sleeping and forced it on again during resume. Here are the files I added (based on this fix on the Ubuntu forums):

/etc/acpi/suspend.d/05-network-manager.sh

#!/bin/sh

dbus-send --system \
--dest=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager \
/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager \
org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.sleep


And,

/etc/acpi/resume.d/91-network-manager.sh


#!/bin/sh
dbus-send --system \
--dest=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager \
/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager \
org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.wake

I made sure to make the files executable by running:

sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/resume.d/91-network-manager.sh

and

sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/suspend.d/05-network-manager.sh

I also had to edit /etc/default/acpi-support to include the following line, so the Intel Pro 2200BG driver would be enabled upon resume after standby:

MODULES="ipw2200"

Then another problem I noticed was that while my laptop LCD blanked when idle, the backlight would turn on after a couple of minutes, and stay this way until the computer was put to sleep or when the screen was awaken . This was so, even when the LCD had actually blanked out. I try manually turning off the LCD backlight using the command

xset dpms force off

but I still experience the problem–backlight turns on after a few seconds. Same if I substitute “off” with “suspend” or “standby.”

I scoured the web for a week until I found a fix that worked. Apparently, battery events (such as charging, full charge, switching to and from AC adaptor power) reported by the system caused the backlight to turn on. Using the NoPM option prevents these events from being misinterpreted (okay, not really a technical explanation, but it’s something like that).

The fix involves adding this line to /etc/X11/xorg.conf to add the following line under Section “ServerLayout”:

Option "NoPM" "yes"

I’m actually in doubt as to what this exactly does, since the X.org manual just says the following about “NoPM” “Yes”:

Disables something to do with power management events. Default: PM enabled on platforms that support it.

How descriptive, eh? At least it says the option has something to do with power management events, some of which–namely the battery events like charge update and power supply changes–were causing the backlight to turn on.

If you’ve been experiencing the same problems, I hope these fixes could help. For reference, my machine is a Compaq Presario V2617TS, with a Celeron-M 750 processor, Intel 915GM chipset, and an added Intel Pro 220BG mini PCI wireless card, DVD-RW drive (all of which work with Ubuntu 7.04).

This is a lazy post, by the way. Lots of work to do, so here are some highlights.

* I installed Ubuntu Linux Feisty Fawn (version 7.04) yesterday. Finally got to archive some old files (via DVD) to get a big enough space on my hard drive to re-partition. The entire process took about 8 hours (most of which was spent working while waiting for the ISO to download via BitTorrent, Acronis to resize my partitions, and Ubuntu to actually install).
* Ubuntu detected all my hardware, and activation, setup and operation was seamless. Even Windows couldn’t detect my newly installed Intel Pro 2200BG wireless card. And that was an Intel chip supposed to come built-in with laptops of this vintage.
* Just faced some problems with sleep and wake-from-sleep while running on battery mode. The wireless network won’t work after waking up. Solution: I added ipw2200 to the MODULES line under /etc/default/acpi-support (be sure to edit this using superuser). Working fine so far, except for some instances when the laptop won’t sleep when lid is closed.
* Enabled NTFS write access, so I can still work on my files in the Windows NTFS partition.
* Imported my entire Firefox profile (which just involved copying over the profile from the NTFS partition to the Linux one.
* Installing apps was a breeze, wit the application manager. Just check the ones you want, and Ubuntu will download and install these for you.
* Installed Beryl. Wow! This was one of the main reasons why I was dead serious with installing Ubuntu on my V2000. It’s as good as OS X Expose. And it even has the 3D cube (which I believe OS X Leopard will feature as “spaces”.).

I’m not exactly a newbie to Linux, as I’ve been using Mandriva as my main work machine back in 2005. But I’m not exactly much of a Linux power user either. But still, I’m not alien to the command line (having started using computers when DOS was still in fashion), and there’s always Google for easy reference. So I’m not totally lost.

One stark observation: It’s easier to start using Linux coming from the OS X camp. Both being Unix-derived, a Mac user won’t get lost navigating through Linux, especially if one is used to tweaking Darwin using the OS X Terminal. If you’re primarily a Windows user, though, you might need some time to adjust.

And of course, the Beryl desktop manager makes all this even better.

Best thing is that even if my machine wasn’t too spiffy (it’s a Dothan class Celeron-M running at 1.5 GHz, with 512M of DDR1 RAM), it can still support all this eye candy without breaking a sweat. I don’t think Windows Vista or even XP can do that. I tried installing some 3D cube type desktop managers on XP and I wasn’t so impressed.

Ubuntu passes the J. Angelo Racoma test. It’s easy enough to install, and it works well enough without the usual headaches you would usually imagine having when doing a fresh OS install on your machine. But more importantly, it gets my seal of approval because I got through with installing Ubuntu even with my very short attention span. My previous attempts at installing Linux distros by myself (Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake/Mandriva) were all in vain. I gave up too easily.

I think Ubuntu Linux will do well as a free OS for home-based computing, and as an alternative to Windows

More testament to Ubuntu Linux’s coolness over at Max Limpag’s site.