Category: hardware

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Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex has been released, but my pc died!

Probably most of you have heard about the latest Ubuntu release – Intrepid Ibex, with all of its nifty features, including :

  • The new Network Manager 0.7 (which supports 3G broadband connection)
  • Support guest login support
  • Encrypted private directory support (via encryptfs)

The only thing that might need a little bit polishing is Cruft Remover tool, which happily classify important files as unneeded files to be deleted (which is dangerous).

but the sad part was….

I don’t know if this is a coincidence or otherwise, but my 7 years old Pentium 4 1.8 GHz died shortly before Intrepid Ibex release. I’m now left with an aged laptop and unreliable wifi internet access at my current workplace to surf the internet.

Bottom line – I might need a new PC.

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Ubuntu Mobile on Asus EeePC

Found this on youtube, thought might share with all of you..

Ubuntu Mobile is a specialized Ubuntu distribution which intended to run on UMPC powered by Intel Atom processor. From what I read, current release of Ubuntu Mobile still does not have wifi support for Asus EeePC, a netbook which for me I think nice to have.

You can find more about it at the Ubuntu Mobile Official Website or download the image at http://people.ubuntu.com/~ogra/mobile/

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How to install Ubuntu from hard disk (without CDROM)

There are times when you need to (re-)install Ubuntu on your computer and at the same time you are in situation where booting from CD-ROM is not possible.

Luckily I found a post from Deepblue Spaces: Install Ubuntu 8.04 from Hard Disk that contains step-by-step to start Ubuntu installer from the official Ubuntu ISO.

  • It involves downloading the Official Ubuntu ISO from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu
  • Extracting /casper/vmlinuz and /casper/initrd.gz from the ISO file.
  • And modifying /grub/menu.lst file to include the boot the cd image.

For more information, please refer to the original tutorial : Deepblue Spaces: Install Ubuntu from Hard Disk.

This trick is particularly handy when you are installing Ubuntu from a computer with buggy BIOS or where CD-ROM is not readily available

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How to save laptop battery when using Ubuntu Linux

When you are working outside with your laptop, the most important thing that you might consider is to maximize your battery lifetime. This is true especially when you are working on location where AC power is not readily available.

Laptop mypapit

Typical laptop might last from 1.5 hour to 3 hours of normal use. So you might want to squeeze out all the battery juice and put it to good use.

Here are a few tips that I got from surfing the internet to save battery life when you are using Ubuntu (or GNU Linux OS in general) :

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B43 broadcom linux driver supported chipset

Supported chipset for b43 Broadcom Linux drivers are :

  • bcm4303 (802.11b-only chips)
  • bcm4306
  • bcm4311 rev 2 / bcm4312 (needs patches for 2.6.24)
  • bcm4309 (only the 2.4GHz part)
  • bcm4318

and unsupported are:

  • BCM 4309 and BCM 4312 is not supported.
  • BCM 4328/4329

Please refer to this post, Ubuntu Hardy Heron : Wifi Broadcom Support with b43 driver for a guide to activate B43 Linux driver in order to use wifi function in your laptop.

Source : Ubuntu: Enabling Broadcom BCM43xx Based Wireless