Cancel my last - just do it the jaunty way

Feel free to ignore everything I've written up to now about installing Linux on the EeePC. It has become officially irrelevant.

If you want a fully working install of Ubuntu without all the buggering about, then just get yourself the beta version of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. It's had some significant tweakery since 8.10 Intrepid and now handles all the Eee hardware straight OOTB. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because the latest Mandriva 2009 can do it so Ubuntu would be lagging behind if they didn't implement it as well.

Not only that, it runs beautifully on my desktop machine too, which Intrepid Ibex point blank refused to do.

So there you have it - all your Ubuntu issues sorted. Should have tried it sooner.

It's still a beta - but it seems pretty stable to me. If you're concerned about running a beta, then the official release is on 23rd April, so not long to wait.

Ubuntu 8.10 - fully working on an Eee near you

So you're probably aware that I've been doing quite a bit of tinkering with Linux recently, and you're also probably aware that I installed Eeebuntu 2.0 NBR onto my EeePC. Whilst it's a good solution, it does need rather a lot of tweaking to get it working correctly (which, by rights, it shouldn't) and after using it for a few days I'm really not convinced by the NBR interface any more (it's a bit prescriptive).

What I really wanted was to run the latest 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) release of good old plain vanilla Ubuntu on the Eee rather than "making do" with the cut-and-shut Eeebuntu version. However, it's a known fact that the Eee hardware simply doesn't work properly with a standard Ubuntu install - most notably the wi-fi and audio don't work. I knew there had to be a way to overcome this though, and after some prodigious Googling, I've found the answer.

First, get the Ubuntu 8.10 ISO onto a USB stick using Unetbootin (I've explained how to do this before, so if you're confused, see previous posts). Boot up the Eee using this USB and install Ubuntu onto your chosen destination drive - I'm still sticking with the SD card for the time being. Once the install is complete, you won't have an internet connection so you're going to need to hook the Eee up with a trusty bit of CAT5 until we get things working.

Reboot into your fresh new Ubuntu install, and then fire up a Terminal window. You're now going to install a custom Eee-specific kernel (courtesy of the wonderful people at www.array.org) which will get all your hardware working properly.

In Terminal, type the following lines, one at a time - there will be some downloading and reconfiguration in between each one when you hit enter, so be patient:

wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-intrepid.list
sudo mv -v array-intrepid.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-apt-key.asc
sudo apt-key add array-apt-key.asc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-eeepc

Once this is done, you'll need to reboot the machine back into Ubuntu, but when your bootloader comes up, you'll now see the option to boot into either standard Ubuntu, or the newly-installed Ubuntu Eee kernel (should show something like "Ubuntu 2.6.27-8-eeepc"). Choose the latter, and once it has loaded you'll now have fully functioning hardware! Easy when you know how...

*** UPDATE ***

I can't get a definitive answer, but from what I've been reading around the interwebs, Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" (due for release on 23rd April) should have full hardware support for netbooks out of the box, so no need for any tweakery at all. Now that *would* be something...

Superuser sandwich

I've been Twittering about my ongoing fight with Ubuntu's terminal window, so Bill steered me towards this... how very "apt"...

X marks the fox

A while back, I extolled the virtues of the Foxmarks bookmarking add-on for Firefox, which syncs all your bookmarks across all your computers. It's a great tool, and works brilliantly.

As of yesterday, Foxmarks got a major overhaul as well as a new name - Xmarks (I guess due to the fact that it is no longer Firefox-specific). It now has a very clever address bar icon which, when you click it, tells you all about other similar sites that fellow Xmarks users have bookmarked in addition to the previous bookmark sync functionality.

I love it - and I'd be stumped without it. If you need something to keep your online life in check, it's highly recommended.

Remotely interesting

I've had two Roku Soundbridges for quite a while now. I started with just the one soon after they were first released in the UK, and I loved it so much that I bought a second one soon after for another room. The principle is simple - they're merely audio streamers that use your iTunes library to wirelessly pipe your music to an attached hi-fi. The good bit is, the system works seamlessly and they look nice, which is always a bonus.

However, a couple of months back, my original Soundbridge gave up the ghost. After extensive testing, I came to the conclusion that it was shafted (I think it may have been the power supply) but try as I might, I couldn't get it working again. I looked around for a replacement unit, but it turns out they're now as rare as rocking horse poo, and the only place I could get one was secondhand on Fleabay. I considered alternative options like the Squeezebox Duet and the Sonos multiroom system, but they were way out of my price range. I thought about an Apple Airport Express, but discounted it because I needed to be able to control it without sitting at my computer.

However, it was while I was researching these options that I came across the iPhone/Touch remote app for controlling iTunes. I'd never really noticed it existed before as I had no real need to use it, but I decided that it just might be what I was looking for to make the Airport Express a viable option. I searched around a bit more, but strangely I couldn't get a definitive answer about whether I would be able to use it to remotely control an Airport Express attached to iTunes. Not even the combined geek-knowledge of Richbos and OliTee could answer the question.

I figured that there *should* be a way of using the Remote app to control iTunes to, in turn, stream its music to the Airport Express - all via wi-fi. If it did what I wanted - and if it worked correctly - it would be quite an elegant solution. I could be sat in the kitchen, use the Touch to browse the iTunes library held on my iMac, choose some music and tell it to be sent to the Airport Express in the lounge. Or was I just expecting too much?



First things first - I downloaded the free Remote app via the Apple App Store. Dead easy, and all done in seconds via the Touch itself. Within no time I was enjoying controlling iTunes using it, despite being sat only two feet from my iMac. So far, so good - but a bit pointless without the Airport Express.

I managed to secure myself an Airport Express on eBay for the very reasonable sum of £45, and just two days later I was feverishly unboxing it. I figured that I might be able to just plug it in and get cracking, but even though its an Apple product, it's not *that* clever. There's still some configuration to be done - but it's reasonably simple.

Firstly, my Airport Express was still configured to its previous owner's settings, so as soon as I tried to connect to it with my iMac it requested a password. Fortunately, it's an easy job to do a factory reset and wipe the unit of its configuration. Hold down the reset button for ten seconds, and there you go.

Once that was done, I ran the Airport Setup Utility on my iMac. My mac is normally hooked up via ethernet, but for this step I had to activate the built-in wi-fi so that the iMac and Airport Express could talk to each other. Very quickly the iMac had detected the wireless signal that the AE was broadcasting, and I connected to it. The utility then takes you through some simple steps to find out how you want to use the AE. I opted to make it a client device on my existing wi-fi network (which was sufficient for my purposes) and with that it was set up and raring to go. A 3.5mm jack to stereo RCA lead to connect it to the AUX input on my hi-fi and I was ready to unleash some tunes.



I fired up iTunes, and after a bit of searching I located a previously unseen dropdown menu in the bottom right of the screen which listed both my computer and the new Airport Express as speaker options. From this you can choose one or both to determine where the audio from iTunes gets sent. I chose both, just for fun, and hit play. I was pleasantly surprised to hear my music emanating from both my computer speakers and my hi-fi speakers in the other room, both in perfect sync with each other. Result!

So then - moment of truth. I switched on the iPod Touch and selected the Remote app. I went to the 'settings' screen (from where you choose which iTunes library to connect to) and, right there in front of me, were two new menu options for 'Speakers' - it listed my iMac and my Airport Express, with on/off switches next to them! I navigated through to my library, found a new album and pressed play on the Touch. Again, without so much as a hiccup, the music changed on both computer and AE.

I then discovered that you can activate and deactivate the speakers from the 'Now playing' screen without having to go back to the 'Settings' page every time. Simply tap the album cover, and not only do you get shuffle, repeat and genius options at the top you also get speaker options at the bottom. I spent a good five minutes switching the speakers on and off - just for fun!

So the upshot of all this is - yes, it works as I wanted it to. And it does it beautifully. So well, in fact, that I'm thinking of eBaying my other Soundbridge and buying another Airport Express. It's a brilliant, elegant and simple solution - how very "Apple"...

Linux me up

If you've been following any of my tweets over the last few days, you'll be aware that I've been putting a toe in the Linux water and trying to find a distribution suitable for both my EeePC and my desktop PC. Both are currently on XP, and although I have no desire (yet) to spurn Windows completely, I am in the market for testing out some other options. Linux has a lot of advantages - free, light, quick and open source - all of which make it a very attractive proposition. It has its downsides as well for sure, but with a little bit of experimentation and some technical nouse most of these can be overcome. In my case, a knowledgable friend and Google came in very handy too.

I've been through about ten different distributions on both desktop and Eee, and as of this moment I've selected and installed my distro of choice on the Eee (it was quite a simple choice in the end) but the desktop machine still remains Linux-free for the time being.

The final choice for the EeePC was Eeebuntu 2.0 which comes in three versions - standard, netbook remix and base. In the end I opted for the Netbook Remix, simply because the interface is a lot simpler to navigate on a small screen with a touchpad than the standard version. The thing that made Eeebuntu the easy choice is that everything works immediately - wi-fi, function keys, ACPI, sound, bluetooth - without needing any tinkering with drivers or suchlike. No other distro I came across managed this feat.

However - Linux being Linux - there were still some things to do to get the Eee running to my satisfaction, so if you want to know exactly what, read on...

Firstly, the Eee doesn't have an optical drive, so burning the Eeebuntu ISO to CD and running a live session from that was out of the question. Instead I discovered a very nice little program called Unetbootin, which allows you to create a bootable USB stick from an ISO image. Fire up Unetbootin, tell it where to find your newly downloaded ISO and which USB drive to put it on and press start. Ten minutes later, you have a bootable USB stick with your chosen distro on it. This isn't, however, a persistent install - so there is still more to do.

So the next thing was to get Eeebuntu installed from the live USB onto the Eee's SD card. I've got an 8GB SDHC card in the slot specifically for the purpose of a Linux install - you could use something smaller, but I wanted plenty of space for updates and files. Also, the swap file for Eeebuntu lives on the card as well so the more breathing space the better really. To do the install, make sure your live USB stick is plugged in and reboot the machine. When the Asus splash screen comes up, press 'ESC' and you'll get an option to boot from the USB rather than the primary disk. Choose that option, and soon you'll be looking at Eeebuntu. From there, select the option to install, and when given the choice, opt to install to the SD card. If the SD doesn't show up as one of the options, make sure you've not got it mounted already. If you have, unmount it and try the install again.

Before you start emailing me about the wisdom of installing an OS onto an SD card, let me stop you there. I know that the constant write cycles to the card probably won't do it any good, and yes, eventually the card will wear out. But come on, how long will that take in a real-world situation? And even if it does knacker the card, it cost me £9.99. By the time I need another one, they'll probably cost half that. Can you tell that I really don't think this is an issue? Good. I'll continue...

Once the install from USB stick to SD card is complete (it'll take about 30 mins) then you can go ahead and remove the USB stick and reboot. Again, hit ESC on startup and this time choose to boot from the SD. Hey presto, in a few seconds you'll be looking at your shiny new Eeebuntu install.

First things first, get the wi-fi hooked up. Left-click on the network icon in the top right, and it'll show you all the networks within range. Choose yours, and away it goes. Once you've got an internet connection, then the rest of the tweakery can begin.

Next thing to do is that all-important 'sudo apt-get update' from within Terminal. This will update all the repositories and locate current versions of all the preinstalled software. I don't know whether it was just a quirk with my install, but the first time I did this, I encountered an error because one of the public keys wasn't correct. I shall attempt to explain how to correct it.

The error I got was as follows:

An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available:
NO_PUBKEY 3F2A5EE4B796B6FE

Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/Release
Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems.

After a spot of Googling, it turns out this isn't uncommon, and is relatively easy to fix. Stay within terminal, and type the following:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv B796B6FE

The trick here is to type the last eight digits of the missing public key - you know, the one listed in the error message?  I've underlined the specific bit above. Your public key WILL be different. Capiche? Hit enter, and you'll get:

gpg: keyring `/home/yourusername/.gnupg/secring.gpg' created
gpg: keyring `/home/yourusername/.gnupg/pubring.gpg' created
gpg: requesting key B796B6FE from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: /home/yourusername/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key B796B6FE: public key "Launchpad PPA for Ubuntu Netbook Remix Team" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)

Hurrah! Now we're getting there, but still one bit to do. Type this command:

gpg --export --armor B796B6FE | sudo apt-key add -

Again, the eight digits in bold need to be the last eight digits of YOUR missing public key, not mine. Hit enter, and you simply get:

OK

Then, try your sudo apt-get update again. It'll work properly this time - trust me. Then once it's done it's business, download and install all the suggested updates. This will probably be quite a lot of files.

Next thing to fix is the biggest glaring omission from Eebuntu in my opinion - no Skype! Again, very easy to fix, so here goes:

Run the Synaptic Package Manager, and once there, go to Settings -> Repositories and click the 'Third Party Software' tab at the top. Click the 'Add' button, and type this into the box

http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/stable non-free

Click OK, then click the 'Reload" button. Synaptic will do an update, and once complete, click the search box and type 'Skype' in to it. Sure enough, it'll find Skype for you. Mark it for download, and apply your upgrades. Sure enough, once it has finished, Skype will be raring and ready to go under your 'Internet' tab.

Last thing you might need is to tweak Firefox to your liking. For some reason, my install didn't have a working Flash plugin, so again this is simple to fix. Head over to the Adobe Flash download page (at time of writing http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/) and choose the '.deb for Ubuntu 8.04+' option from the dropdown. Tell it to download and install, and just follow the instructions from there. The last thing to do to get Firefox running just the way I wanted it was to install the quite wonderful Foxmarks plugin to import all my bookmarks.

And that, as they say, is that. A fully-featured, fully-working persistent install of Eeebuntu installed onto SD card for maximum EeePC flexibility. When my wife uses the machine, it just boots straight into XP without asking any questions. When I use it, I boot from SD and indulge myself in some quality open-source geekery. Splendid.

Please let it be true

So then... according to MacRumors, the interwebs seem to believe that there's an Apple netbook/tablet in the works. Lots of gossip amongst news agencies including Reuters and Dow Jones about Apple placing a large order for 10-inch touchscreens.

Whether it's true or not remains to be seen, but if it is, then this Asus Eee 901 that I'm currently typing on is on borrowed time...

Nintendo DS wi-fi workaround

In my continuing "ways I've found to overcome technology problems" series, I've just found a good way of taming the truculent wi-fi on my Nintendo DS Lite.

When set to "auto everything" mode, I could NOT get it to connect to my wireless network at all. Nothing. Not a jot. So, in true problem-solving mode I hit the internet for answers.

Turns out - as with all these things - that I'm not the only one to be having issues. Seems like when the DS is set to obtain IP and DNS settings automatically, it can get confused very easily, particularly when there are lots of other wireless devices on the network.

Turns out the easiest way around the problem is to configure the DS manually, so here comes a step-by-step on how to do it. Needless to say, if the automatic settings work for you, there's no point in fiddling, but if the DS is refusing to play ball this might be what you're looking for.

1) Grab your nearest wi-fi enabled DS game and slap it in the DS. When it boots up, find the "wi-fi settings" in the game menu (different games have it in different places).
2) Tap the "Nintendo Wi-fi Connection Settings" button on the next screen. If you've got any current settings saved, you might want to erase them at this point, or alternatively choose one of the other free slots - your choice.
3) This is where we're going to get "manual", so you're going to need some settings. The best place to get these is from your computer. In Windows XP, go to the "Run" dialog box and type CMD to get you to the command prompt. Once you're there, type IPCONFIG/ALL. This command will bring up a whole load of settings - might look a bit daunting, but bear with me here.
4) On your DS, change the "Auto-obtain IP Address" to "No" rather than yes. This will alllow you to type in the next lot of settings.
5) Now you need to choose your IP address. Look at the information in the IPCONFIG window and you'll see your current IP listed there - probably something like 192.168.0.x. You'll be keeping the first three numbers the same on your DS but changing the last one to something else. What number you choose will depend on how many devices (not just wireless ones) you've got on your network. I can routinely have ten things connected at once, so I opted to have this last number as 20. Choose something significantly higher than you're likely to need so there are no conflicts later on.
6) Type your chosen IP into the DS by tapping the "edit" button and punching them in with your stylus (you need all four sets of numbers).
7) Back on the IPCONFIG window on your computer, you'll now need the numbers listed as SUBNET MASK and DEFAULT GATEWAY.
8) Type these numbers into your DS in the same way you did with your chosen IP. On the DS, the default gateway is just called "gateway", in case you were wondering.
9) Set "Auto obtain DNS" on the DS to "no", then find the two sets of numbers listed as DNS SERVERS in your IPCONFIG window.
10) Type the first DNS SERVER number into your DS under the "Primary DNS" setting and the second number into the "Secondary DNS".
11) Tap "Save settings" and you should be good to go! Tap "test connection" at the top of the DS window and if all is well, you'll be greeted with a "Connection successful" message.
12) Play online games to your heart's content and get your ass whipped by a seven year old Chinese kid that you've never even met...

I realise this information is already out there on the internets, but the more places it's available the better in my opinion.

Phase two complete

Nothing exactly earth-shattering, but I've just completed the next step of my iMac upgrade plan. Not blessed with a mountain of cash this month, I decided to go for the least expensive (but most pretty) option and added a new Apple aluminium wired keyboard. To be honest, I don't know why I didn't do it sooner - not only does it look fabulous, but it's also a joy to type on, the media keys across the top are very handy and the best bit is that it was only £28.

The 1TB hard drive, OSX 10.5 and iLife 09 will have to wait a bit longer. Can't make up my mind whether to change the HDD first (and reinstall 10.4) or whether to do everything at once and change the hard drive and install the new OS at the same time (which would seem to make sense). If I do it all at once though, that's about £220 (£90 HDD and £130 Mac Box Set) I'll have to drop. Ouch.

Ah well. For the time being, at least I've got a lovely keyboard...