Adventures in Wireless Ubuntu

I have an old (nearly 5 years old) PC that has fallen out with Windows. Running Windows on it is slow. Very slow. Over its life, I’ve had to do two fresh installs of XP and battle with a host of malware. Until I got a Mac, it was my main computer, but over the last few months I’ve migrated to Windows in Parallels, so I don’t use this PC at all. Time to install Ubuntu and make the PC useful again. The Ubuntu install was painless and quick. I had a USB wireless adapter that wasn’t so keen on the switch away from Windows. Having gone through a few forums and tried a few things unsuccessfully, I decided to take another tack. I picked up a cheap Netgear WG111 and followed these instructions. To get the modprobe instruction to work I needed to find ndiswrapper.ko and move it to the right location. After that, I added the MAC address to the list my wireless router accepts, used the Network thingy in the Gnome panel to join my wireless network (using WPA2) and, would you believe it, it all worked. It’s worth reading this to get over the Keyring nag.

So, a few hours, a lot of command linery (Ubuntu isn’t for you if you’re allergic to the comand line) and a false start with the USB wireless adapter and my tired, old PC has a new lease of life.  It does take a while to boot, but once booted it’s quick as you like.

Installing Parallels Tools in Ubuntu

I didn’t realise that version 3.0 of Parallels allows you to install the tools for Linux OSes.  Reading the release notes for the latest build, I discovered this useful feature.  And the instructions here show you how to do it in Ubuntu.  No more Control+Alt to release the mouse for me.

It’s just a click to the right

Want to be able to launch a terminal window from the current directory in Ubuntu?  I did.  Read this.  Problem solved.

Simple Ubuntu install

For those who want to try Ubuntu and want to install it from Windows try this.  Personally, I’d opt for either running for the Live CD or running Ubuntu in VMWare (here’s a community built image for VMWare Player.)  But if it gets a few more people to try Ubuntu, it’s a good thing.

Packaging

With a freshly installed copy of Edgy Eft, Synaptic Package Manager (or apt-get if you prefer the command line) is where I’ve been hanging out. The ability to search for packages and add them (automatically adding dependencies) is excellent. It means I can add the tools I need to my Ubuntu installation and be productive. I’ve got Windows Vista RC1 and Ubuntu installed under Parallels.  I’m spending a lot more time using Ubuntu and it feels more useful.

On the edge

I’ve installed the Edgy Eft release of Ubuntu under Parallels. There’s a couple of useful tips in this article (the article refers to the Dapper Drake release, but I found no issues with using it for Edgy Eft) - particularly to get the screen resolution right.  As expected, the installation was easy and with only 376Mb of memory assigned, it runs well.

I am not a number

But the next version of Ubuntu might be. Alliterative animals may no longer be in demand. Read more here.

The Ubuntu X Factor

Having upgraded from Breezy Badger to Dapper Drake, I had an old Breezy Badger image laying around that I wasn’t going to use. Having used xfce in the past and coming across Xubuntu, I decided to migrate my Breezy Badger image to Xubuntu.  The instructions here don’t mention that you need to comment your CD-ROM drive out of the sources.list file if, like me, you have a pre-built VM image (and, therefore, don’t have the CD.)
Unsurprisingly, it works.  The xfce desktop is really responsive.   There’s something about being able to swap the entire desktop experience that appeals to me.  I got an image of Ubuntu in order to have a working Mono environment.  I’m starting to think about using it as the primary OS (on an old machine.)

Virtual Weekend

I have had VMWare Player installed for a little while now and have been getting acquainted with some of the Community built images - especially Ubuntu. Yesterday, I decided to be upgrade my Ubuntu image to 6.06 (Dapper Drake.) So, I copied the 5.10 image, renamed it all to 6.0 (remembering to rename all the references in the vmx file), gritted my teeth and upgraded (change the sources file and do an ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’). OK, so I didn’t need to grit my teeth - it mostly worked and where it went didn’t go according to plan, the action suggested sorted it all out.
A couple of hours later (most of which I spent out of the house) and I was the proud user of Dapper Drake. And very nice it is too. The main reason I wanted to upgrade was to get version 0.9 of MonoDevelop, which I now have, so I can start to monkey around. I haven’t had too much time yet with MonoDevelop but the good news with this version is that the ‘Import Visual Studio Solution’ option works (so farewell to prj2make#.)