Dell Adamo XPS

I ran over a review by CNET.com on the newly released Dell Adamo XPS laptop. The system carries a 13.4″ LED screen, 1.4 GHZ Low Power Usage CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD drive. The device is also ultra slim and weighs a minimum of 3.2 pounds (twice as much as the Sony Viao X). And then there is the unusual design of the Laptop where the keyboard sits at an angle as you open it up.

Sure, Dell may have some innovation going on to make this thing possible, but in all honesty it has got to be one of the ugliest notebook’s I have ever seen. It is so incredulously bland and lacking in any kind of cosmetic appeal.

Now I am not one for deciding if a Laptop is “good” or not based on cosmetics, but when you are talking about Dell … well all they really have (or not) is their looks. I find it strange that with all the effort and money that must have been put into this system that they could not come up with something that also was just a little bit pleasing to the eye.

I also love how thin it is, and one right away sees this as Dell’s reply to the MacBook Air and Thinkpad X300/301, however this is a

Dell

and as such I would be very interested in knowing about the build quality of the item – who knows, maybe they got it right!?

In any case the price is definitely not to my liking – again – not for a Dell!

Ubuntu 9.10 – Nvidia Driver Update

My desktop was running a bit sluggish so I decided I would update to the very latest Nvidia drivers. Here is what I did:

- First I ran a script to see if there was anything I was missing.
Open a Terminal and do the following commands one at a time:

wget http://blogage.de/files/9124/download -O compiz-check

chmod +x compiz-check

./compiz-check

Then see if you have the Nvidia drivers installed:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-185

If they are not installed already they will install now.

- Now to install the very latest Nvidia drivers do the following in a Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nvidia-vdpau/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-190

Once that finishes (might take several minutes) reboot your computer. When Ubuntu is loaded go into

System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects (tab)

and disable Compiz by selecting “None“. Then re-enable Compiz by selecting “Normal“.
And that is it!

Enjoy

Ubuntu 9.10 and Samba Shares (testparm error)

Recently I got this error when trying to share a folder from within my Home folder:

Failed to execute child process "testparm" (No such file or directory)

The fix was extremely simple – just update your system, and especially ’samba-common-bin’.

In the Terminal do

sudo apt-get upgrade

Or run the Update Manager from

System > Administration > Update Manager

No reboot is needed, just go back to your folder and share it again.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala / Intel Audio Device – Mic working and no ‘popping’ sounds …

Here is the device that we are dealing with:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio
Controller (rev 03)
Codec: Conexant CX20549 (Venice)

And the Operating System is: Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

NUMBER 1: To get the sound and internal mic working do the following:

Add the following two lines to your sources.list file (sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list)

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c4pp4/cx20549/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/c4pp4/cx20549/ubuntu karmic main

Then add the PPA key with the following command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 42FA88E8

Then refresh the package list:

sudo apt-get update

Then upgrade the packages:

sudo apt-get upgrade

Once finished reboot your computer and your DONE!

NUMBER 2: Get rid of the popping sounds

In your Terminal do:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and change the setting:

options snd-hda-intel power_save=10

to

options snd-hda-intel power_save=0

Reboot!

Huge “Thanks” to c4pp4, Colin King and everyone else who contributed to these solutions in the Ubuntu Community.

Ubuntu 9.10 Survey

Please download and spread the word!

Email back to support@techies-r-us.com.au

Thank You!

Ubuntu9.10-Survey

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

It has been less than 2 weeks since Ubuntu 9.10 was released and as usual the Ubuntu community of users have been streaming to get their personal copy, either in the form of an upgrade from a previous release of Ubuntu, or as an ISO.

I downloaded the ISO and ran it in a VM on my Ubuntu Jaunty desktop. I usually just check the latest release out in a VM to get a feel of it and see what’s new and what’s not. With previous releases I was more or less excited with the release but not thrilled, however with Ubuntu 9.10 I was immediately captivated and then thrilled, so much so that I set about backing up my data on both my laptop and desktop in order to prepare them for fresh installations of Ubuntu 9.10.

I read an article today which sought to compare Windows 7, MacOSX Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 9.10, and they gave the impression that Ubuntu release timing was somehow in competition with the release dates of Microsoft and Apple, but nothing could be farther from the truth as the Ubuntu release schedule is set for every 6 months come rain or shine, snow or sand, Microsoft of Apple. In this way it would be more likely that Microsoft and Apple were arranging their release dates as close to Ubuntu’s as possible, although I don’t think that was the case either. But it should be clear to all that Ubuntu is a little too grown up to have anything as goofy as an unset release schedule (MS – grow up!).

As I am running the latest release I feel like the Ubuntu development team have definitely been busy, not that they have not been busy in previous releases, but this time its more noticeable on the the surface – and in the Desktop environment the “surface” means a lot!

There is also proof of immense work having been done on the internal workings of the Ubuntu OS.

Ubuntu One is a fabulous concept and the implementation in Ubuntu 9.10 is simple and solid – it just works. Ubuntu One lets you create a free account for 2GB of online storage space (the cloud) and is fully integrated with Ubuntu so you can save files directly from with the OS and in turn access it anywhere in the world on any computer – absolutely marvellous. And what’s even better is that its all built into Ubuntu by default.

The Add/Remove Applications tool has been replaced by another one and its nice looking but I wondered how to select more than one application at a time for installation or removal.

The detection and installation of Hardware was smooth and all my devices on both my laptop and desktop was working out of the box. Some of the hardware I had was:
- USB Webcam
- Epson Multi-function Printer/Scanner/Copier
- USB flash drives and external Hard Drives (NTFS volumes worked out of the box)
- Internal Card Reader (Laptop)
- Internal Atheros Wireless Card (Laptop)
- USB TP-Link Wireless Dongle
- Sound Devices (Laptop and Desktop)
- Nvidia Graphic Card (Desktop)
- Intel Graphics (Laptop)
… Basically I did not have to install a single hardware device driver on either system – Beat that Microsoft!

Some things I would like to see change … still:

- SMB network service installed by default – I think this is really a must!
- Revert back to Pidgin – Empathy lacks IRC support!
- Ubuntu Tweak installed by default – an incredibly useful utility!

Another thing I would like to see happen is for there to be a page that pops up which takes the user through a basic tour of the new features since the previous release. For instance this tour would mention that Ubuntu 9.10 now comes with Empathy as its default IM as well as gives a brief explanation why this change was made. To some this might seem like its just “too much” and not really necessary, however I think it is a major part of educating the user – and Linux is (should continue to be) all about educating the user – Unlike Microsoft!

Ubuntu Linux is really not given the promotion that it needs and deserves. Even though there are countless “Which is better” articles which attempt bring Ubuntu, Windows and MacOS ‘head-to-head’, they for a large part leave the reader (especially a MS Windows user) with a feeling of dread and wariness of the Linux Desktop OS – and REALLY is not that dreadful!

So in finishing I just want to congratulate the Ubuntu Development Team for their efforts. You people are doing amazing things!

Windows 7 price drop mimics Snow Leopard …

http://www.pcworld.com/article/172258/windows_7_deal_students_win_others_lose.html

Pigeons and data transfer faster than Broadband???

Yes, it’s true … In South Africa at least.

Read the article HERE!

Moving location …

Having just moved to another residence I have been pretty busy and have not had a chance to say anything new here.

I am trying to get ADSL back up and running here but have had to make do with Dial-Up for the last few days – which is extremely painful.

I did read an interesting article today about the flaws of UAC in Windows 7 though, and how MS had said that they are not going to be repairing it since they do not see it as a flaw. Hmmmm … interesting … Windows 7 does look and feel pretty slick though, although so many of it’s “features” are totall rip-off’s of Linux and MacOS stuff that is and has been around for some time.

Also I found it interesting that many of the supposedly wonderful things about UAC enhancments in Windows 7 are extremely similar to what Linux distros like Ubuntu have with the sudo prompt. Makes me wonder …

Repair Grub using Ubuntu LiveCD

1. Boot your computer up with Ubuntu CD
2. Open a terminal window
3. Go SuperUser (that is, type “sudo -s”). Enter root passwords as necessary.
4. Type “grub”
5. Type “find /boot/grub/stage1″. You’ll get a response like “(hd0,1)”. Use whatever your computer spits out for the following lines.
6. Type “root (hd0,1)”, or whatever your hard disk + boot partition numbers are for Ubuntu.
7. Type “setup (hd0)”, to install GRUB to MBR, or “setup (hd0,1)” or whatever your hard disk + partition nr is, to install GRUB to a partition.
8. Quit grub by typing “quit”.
9. Reboot and remove the bootable CD.