Waxing Cerebral

Microsoft. Outlook. It sends attachments in its own weird an wonderful format as a single file called winmail.dat, for those of us fortunate enough not to have Outlook as our email client to unpack them. There's an opensource project, TNEF which provides a tool that unpacks these well

1. Download the tnef tar
2. Untar it (tar -xf .., or just double click)
3. Follow the README steps (note the make install needs to be run with sudo)

What I use on xubuntu linux for specific tasks:....

Task	Tool	Date	Ubuntu Package	Comment
pdf annotating	flpsed	Sep 2008	flpsed	Very basic app that enables load/save of ps and pdf. Multi-line text can be added to the docs. No highlighting option or editing of existing content.
pdf editing	pdfedit	Sep 2008	pdfedit	Allows editing of any part of multi-page PDF documents. Can be very slow to use on long documents. New content such as highlighting and single-line text can be added also.
vector graphics / single-page pdf annotating	inkscape	Sep 2008	inkscape	Great tool for vector graphics, quick and easy results. Can import a single page of PDF documents.
xml viewing / formatting	XML Copy Editor	Sep 2008	xmlcopyeditor	Load and view xml. Validate form and against dtd etc, plus nicely format. Quick and easy.
diff	meld	Sep 2008	meld	Excellent visual diff/merge tool.
text/source editor	SciTE	Sep 2008	SciTE	Excellent text editor with awareness of many languages and markups. Tabbed view.

Came across this site that stocks some really fun looking hardware. Of particular note is stocking only opensource-capable routers, laptops without an OS (no M$ tax!) and single-board computers that use only 5-7 watts that you could really have some fun with. Oh and who could pass up a GSM modem with built-in GPS? Oh, the gadgetry and geekyness.

nicegear.co.nz

A place for my notes on the things I've done to get Xubuntu Feisty (Ubuntu is the same procedure) running from scratch on my Toshiba Tecra P5 laptop (PTS53A-02F01D).

Started by trying to boot into the LiveCD. This failed with:
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
This message is a symptom of any boot problems - after some figuring out it turned out that there were problems with the cd module.
To fix, restart and on the boot screen, push F6. Edit the boot command ('e'), add:
break=top
(type 'b') to boot
This causes booting to stop early in the boot process (I think) and lets you type in stuff. When the prompt comes up, type:
modprobe piix
exit
This loads the module required to read the cd.

Booting then seems to continue happily but eventually it just freezes with text on the screen. This is because it doesn't recognise the video driver properly. We need to use the xorg default driver for now.
Pushing Ctrl+Alt+F1 takes you to the single user login.
sudo -s
vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf - (This uses the editor 'vi'. If you're not familiar with this, use 'i' to change to edit mode, 'esc' to come back out of edit mode, 'x' to delete a letter (when not in edit mode), ':w' to save (write) the file and ':q' to quit.)
change driver "nv" to "vesa" then exit
/etc/init.d/gdm restart
And Ubuntu should boot!

So play with it, enjoy the LiveCD, and when ready, double click 'install' on the desktop.

At first it couldn't manage to partition the hard drive, and unfortunately killed Windows :(.
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ONLY DO THIS SECTION IF IT CAN NOT WRITE THE PARTITIONS - THIS WILL KILL WINDOWS.

I managed to get the disk manageable again by running:
mkfs /dev/sda
Now I could partition with:
cfdisk
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Congratulations, you should now be booting into Ubuntu :)

CD
So, in order to get continued cd support, we need to tell Ubuntu to load piix each time it boots. To do this, open a terminal and type:
sudo vi /etc/modules
To the end of this file, add:
piix

Graphics
I had difficulty setting up the nvidia graphics driver and really wanted the goods. So I found envy. Brilliant. Get it, run it. It downloads and installs the correct nvidia proprietary video drivers.

Sound
Initially I had a hardware problem so couldn't get sound at all which was very frustrating. Now that the hardware's fixed, it's fine. (Antony Williams also has a great script for automatically getting the latest alsa development drivers, should you need them.) Currently, plugging in headphones has no impact (i.e. sound still comes out of speakers and headphones are dead), so will update here when I resolve.
EDIT (Feb 08): I now have headphones sound as of alsa v1.0.16. You can find out your current alsa version by running:

1. I need to mute the main speakers manually when I plug in the headphones
2. Microphone doesn't work, either built-in or plugged-in