Ubuntu – Page 2 – bloggingIT

Install vim on an Ubuntu server and desktop

I’ve grown quite fond of vim over the past couple of weeks. After learning and re-learning the shortcut keys, I think that I’m finally on my way to knowing what the hell I am doing!

Anyway, after working on it – I’ve found gVim to be great.

To install, just run:

<code>sudo apt-get install vim-full</code>

This includes syntax highlighting and other neat stuff. If you want to gegt the syntax highlighting on the server, just run:

<code>sudo apt-get install vim</code>

Yes, that’s right – no extra bits.

BlackBerry Update

Well, the BlackBerry is coming along nicely. I’m gradually getting it to work the way I want it to work.

So far, the cool bits are:

Google Maps uses either GPRS or GPS (you can connect a GPS receiver with Bluetooth)
Yahoo! Messenger works off the bat and can stay connected at all times. Never miss an IM again.
Google Sync syncs up with phone with my online calendar – finally a computer-less way to do this!
Impressive battery life. Even though I have been caning the phone with online and Bluetooth as well as loads of phone calls – it breezes through the day without any problems.
The Pearl is noticeably smaller than the N80 and the Razr. This goes against my reputation of having a brick-like phone.

There are some other neat things as well. I had some trouble transferring contact data from my N80 to the BlackBerry, but after some experimentation I found a way to do it that didn’t require a computer. It was somewhat tedious having over 100 contacts though.

I still want to get an IM program installed that will use MSN, as some of my business contacts use this. This will tie in with Yahoo! and Google Talk nicely and round it all off.

The built-in browser is a bit useless, so I’ve installed Opera Mini which can render pages properly when the browser gets stuck. I often find myself flitting between the two though, as Opera doesn’t seem to handle downloads properly.

The only downer is that the BB Pearl doesn’t seem to connect to Ubuntu properly through USB – and the Bluetooth connection is a real pain in the arse. This is probably going to make any kind of synchronisation very difficult – to nigh on impossible. There are the Linux Barry tools in development, which have some way of backing up data and things – but I haven’t had the chance to have a play with these yet.

All in all – the experience is going well, and I’m hoping that I can import my MSN contacts into Google Talk soon. Unfortunately to do that, I need to update our company domain SRV records which is opening another can of worms…

Vista, Why You Eat my Computer?

So, Vista’s been out for a while now – some people think it’s great (usually they are selling it), some think that it’s pants.

Now, I’m not far from the front of the queue when it comes to raving about Linux. Ubuntu was the second Linux distro that I have tried, and I’ve stuck with it quite happily. In fact, things have remained pretty good from my initial post about my first experiences with Ubuntu.

On the other hand, Windows has it’s own place in the world. If you’re a person who can afford Microsoft’s astronomical licensing costs – then Microsoft can offer you some great things too.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel that Windows Vista is one of those great things.

Slug on Mogadon

The thing that strikes me whenever I use Vista is that it is so slow. Not just slow, but slooooooow. I have to use a variety of systems, and when I need to fix somebody’s laptop that is running Vista I should be putting an afternoon aside.

This isn’t entirely Microsoft’s fault. Consumer greed, business greed and the general desire to get more for less has also led to this rocky road to Hell. Computers and notebooks are generally sold cheap. Cheap means under-spec. Even up to the end of Windows XP’s golden lifespan (I’m not saying it’s past it, by the way), computer manufacturers were selling new systems with 256MB RAM. I’m sorry, but I’ve used Windows XP enough to know that as soon as you put on Service Pack 2, some anti-virus software, maybe some anti-malware package and then decide to run a few applications – time begins to speed up around you. Either that or the computer is running slowly. You decide.

Now Vista has mammoth requirements for what is essentially a core program. The minimum amount of RAM to run Vista is 512MB. That’s what I say is minimum for XP nowadays. I recommend having more than 1GB RAM installed for a pleasant Vista experience.

The problem is, noteboook manufacturers might even stump up the extra £5 to put 1GB of RAM in – but when 256MB of RAM is then being stolen by the onboard graphics so that you can see the Aero effects, things are clearly still not right.

Vista will run well on a decent, modern computer system. The problem is that Joe Public will be sold some tat from PC World by a part-time A-level student who will bestow Vista’s Flip-3D as a major selling point. Oh, it can burn DVDs as well.

Real Life

When real-life steps in, this is unsuitable for a lot of computers. Microsoft wants business to be using its latest baby, but on any existing hardware – Vista just doesn’t make the crunch.

My computer is almost 4 years old and runs Ubuntu beautifully. I have 1GB which more than meets any application requirements. In fact, this only becomes a problem when I run Windows XP in a virtual machine. Ironically, XP demands more memory running a few apps than the operating system that it is running on! And Ubuntu has a barrel more services, a 3D desktop, and (when I’m using it), about 10-15 application windows open!

Dual-boot

So I’m dual-booting into Vista at the moment. I do this when I fancy a game of Command and Conquer Generals with my brother over the internet. I often say, “I’ll just boot into Windows – give me 15 minutes.” Usually by the end of that time Windows may have finished messing around with updates, defragging, loading unneccesary services and generally being slow (on a 2.4GHz P4 with 1GB RAM), before I feel that I can get the thing to behave and run reasonably well.

I’ve been stung enough times when Vista decides that the ideal time to start defragging my hard disk drive and running an anti-spyware scan is during the middle of a game.

False Hope

When I was using the Beta versions of Vista, it was slow – but I figured that it was due to being a Beta. There was a clear effort from Redmond to meet Vista’s release date and there was a buzz. Vista naysayers were told to wait for the RTM (release to manufacturing) version. But overall, the performance wasn’t a great deal better in the RTM version.

More False Hope

Service Pack 1 was a glimmer of hope. Some performance increases and a rollup of some updates that fix what I can only describe as stupid problems that should never have been in the RTM version (such as having to Activate Windows after it has already been activated).

I thought I’d give this a try on my system. Guess what? It didn’t install. I wasn’t surprised. The update need prerequisites installed, and othr bits and bobs. I’d already had difficulty getting these installed on other computers, so I have a grave thought that it would mess up my system.

It didn’t install – but at least it didn’t wreck my system. Microsoft’s answer is to just keep trying until it works. Umm, I don’t have hours to piss away waiting for my work computer to continuously fail to install an update that takes around an hour to work out if it wants to install or now.

So, I gave up after attempt 3 or 4. I tried installing manually from the downloads. It’s not right. Vista feels inherently broken.

Time to Upgrade

So it’s time to upgrade to XP. It’s a joke I’ve seen floating around the internet for a while now, but it’s exactly how I’m feeling. I’m going to dual-boot into XP for playing games. It can run fast, and doesn’t have some of the hardware quirks that I’m still experiencing with Vista.

Over time, my disappointment with Vista has settled. It’s OK – but it’s extremely lacking in key areas. And these key areas tip the boat for me.

I’m just thankful that I run a Linux O/S as my main home operating system. I know it’s stable. I know it will behave itself most of the time. It’s still frustrating to use occasionally, but these times of frustration occur much less than when I use Vista.

Extract Windows resources with icotool

I was playing around with Wine the other day. It’s pretty cool that I can run Dreamweaver and Fireworks on Ubuntu with very few issues now.

One of the problems I did encounter was that the setup program for Dreamweaver wouldn’t run under wine, and the program files had to be copied across to my Linux system from an existing Windows installation.

Once done, it ran with no problems – but I now had to create the icon in the Applications menu.

Creating the menu entry was straightforward enough – I just copied the Fireworks link and edited it to work with Dreamweaver. The problem was that I really wanted the icon to sit nicely.

After scouring a few forums, it turned out that Ubuntu already had a set of programs available in the repositories called icoutils.

After working out what binaries were installed:

<code>dpkg -L icoutils</code>

I played around with some of the tools. I can’t remember exactly what I did, so I’ll just say play with the tools. You can extract ICOs easily from DLLs and executables, and save them as ICO files or other formats.

Once done, I had a pretty Dreamweaver icon that looked better than the Fireworks one that Wine extracted!

What’s even funnier is that to get a tool in Windows to do this kind of thing inevitably lead to using shareware.

Secure Remote Access with Ubuntu

I needed to set up some remote access today, and although it was straightforward, it was difficult finding the information I needed.

Set up the server (that’s your computer)

Click System > Preferences > Remote Desktop
Tick the boxes as shown, and set up a password. If you don’t want to force a popup window when a connection is made, don’t tick the Ask for your confirmation box
Click close
Install the ssh server:
```
<code>sudo apt-get install ssh</code>
```
This will allow access to your computer to be encrypted and secure (vnc is relatively insecure otherwise)

If you’re going to connect over the internet, you need to set up port 22 to forward to your computer. It’s a little convoluted, so I wont go into that here. If you’re just doing it on a home network, then it is not a problem.

Right, now you’re ready to connect. On another Linux PC (guest):

In the terminal, run

<code>ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 user@yourpc</code>

Now run (not in the terminal)
```
<code>vncviewer localhost:0</code>
```

user@youpc is a valid computer user and hostname or IP address (ie. john@homepc.com).

What this does is create an ssh tunnel from one computer to another, and tells the guest computer to use this connection when using VNC (which is why we use localhost, rather than the computer’s IP address or name).

It works a charm, and is much more secure than opening the ports to the outside world.