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HOW TO INSTALL UBUNTU STUDIO 9.10 WITHOUT HAVING THE INSTALL #%$&%# FAIL!:

#142
Bad news for those who own notebooks which have Broadcom wi-fi cards or wi-fi cards which aren't supported by Ubuntu at all.

Unlike 32 bit Ubuntu/Ubuntu Studio 9.10, the 32 bit ver. 10.04 CD has neither the bcmwl-kernel-source required to make Broadcom cards work, nor ndiswrapper to allow the use of Windows .inf wi-fi drivers.

Said files APPEAR to be on the CD but when one tries to install them one gets an error message stating that they couldn't be downloaded from the Internet. :-(

I don't mean to seem ungrateful, but I wish Ubuntu's developers would make & maintain a do-not-break list of things which work in a current version of Ubuntu when developing a new release--and then vet each new release to ensure that said list of previously working features remains unbroken.

Sure, Ubuntu 10.04 runs faster, has cool new features, and even looks better - BUT - excluding the above mentioned files is quite baffling since a notebook PC without wi-fi is little more than a portable typewriter.

Yes I'm aware than one can download said files via a wired connection, but having to do so is analogous to having to push-start a new car whereas the old one would rev up with a turn of a key. :-\

For those notebook owners whose wi-fi cards have been shunned, here's an excellent long range substitute which works under under Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 (I've got one):

"...The Wi-Fire uses the UW2453 radio, which has been included in the mainline Linux kernel since 2.6.23..."

http://www.hfield.com/the-wi-fire/platform-compatibility/linux/

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Shortly after Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was released Canonical put out 8.04.1 to accommodate an extensive array of patches etc.

Hopefully they'll do the same for Ubuntu & Ubuntu Studio 10.04 LTS re getting bcmwl-kernel-source and ndiswrapper back on the install discs where they belong.

BTW. Macintosh and Windows users don't have to go through THIS razz-ma-tazz just to share a few files between a couple of machines:

"To share folders using the Shared Folders application:

1. Press Applications ▸ Accessories ▸ Terminal to open a Terminal.

2. Type shares-admin and press Enter to open Shared Folders.

3. You may receive a message which says Sharing services are not installed. If this happens, ensure that the two checkboxes in the message box are checked and press Install services. Sharing service support will then be downloaded and installed; this may take a while..."

Sharing services should be on the Ubuntu install discs. Period.

If disc space is an issue then lose the games. Those who are into such diversions will want to download more interesting ones anyway.

My .02
 
#147
Downloading large files via Firefox (or other web browsers) can be a pain. If the connection is dropped (bad wi-fi, a server reset, or a system crash etc) then the download will be ruined and will have to begin anew. (And if one's Internet connection is slow in the first place... :()

A solution:

If you are already running an Ubuntu install then you may wish to download (from the Ubuntu repositories) Gwget. It's the gui for an excellent download manager built into Ubuntu called wget (which can resume downloads after dropped connections).

To download the Ubuntu Studio .iso via Gwget, go to the Ubuntu Studio download page...

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

or

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]


...right-click on the link to the .iso that you want, and from the pop-up menu choose 'Copy Link Location' (doing so will copy the link location to the clipboard).

Next, launch Gwget and left-click the document icon in its window and you'll see what to do next.

(You may wish to have a look at Gwget's Edit-->Preferences to see what options are available before doing the above.)

Oh and don't forget to verify the downloaded .iso's integrity by vetting its md5sum (<--you'll see a document with these on the same page as the links to the Ubuntu Studio .iso(s)

Just copy (to a text document on your PC's desktop) the md5sum for the Ubuntu Studio .iso you're downloading so that you can check it once the download is done.

An easy way to get the md5sum from a downloaded .iso (or file) in Ubuntu is to...

- launch Terminal, and type md5sum, then tap the keyboard's <Space> bar once.

- next, drag the downloaded Ubuntu Studio .iso into the Terminal window (doing so will automatically define the directory path to the .iso)

- now tap <Enter> and wait until Terminal displays the .iso's md5sum and then copy said md5sum to the clipboard so that you can paste it into the aforementioned text document (on your PC's desktop) directly under the md5sum you got from the Ubuntu Studio .iso download page.

If the two match perfectly then the .iso you downloaded is intact. If not then you'll have to try downloading the desired Ubuntu Studio .iso again (occasionally files can get corrupted during downloading from the Internet).

IMPORTANT: Before checking a downloaded .iso's md5sum (or doing anything else to it) one should set its permissions to 'Read Only' to avoid inadvertently changing/corrupting its files.

To do so:

- right-click on the .iso and from the pop-up menu select 'Properties' then click the 'Permissions' tab. You'll see what to do from there.

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Wget - The non-interactive network downloader
Invalid Link Removed
 
#149
Something I just found in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS' Synaptic Package Manager:

Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment - static binary

AIDE is an intrusion detection system that detects changes to files on the
local system. It creates a database from the regular expression rules that
it finds from the config file. Once this database is initialized it can be
used to verify the integrity of the files. It has several message digest
algorithms (md5, sha1, rmd160, tiger, haval, etc.) that are used to check
the integrity of the file. More algorithms can be added with relative
ease. All of the usual file attributes can also be checked for
inconsistencies.

This package contains the statically linked binary for "normal" systems.

You will almost certainly want to tweak the configuration file in
/etc/aide/aide.conf or drop your own config snippets into
/etc/aide/aide.conf.d.

Upstream URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aide

Canonical provides critical updates for aide until April 2015.
 
#157
USB_ModeSwitch - Activating Switchable USB Devices on Linux
Invalid Link Removed

"Introduction

USB_ModeSwitch is (surprise!) a mode switching tool for controlling "flip flop" (multiple device) USB gear.

Several new USB devices (especially high-speed wireless WAN stuff, there seems to be a chipset from Qualcomm offering that feature) have their MS Windows drivers onboard; when plugged in for the first time they act like a flash storage and start installing the driver from there.
After that (and on every consecutive plugging) this driver switches the mode internally, the storage device vanishes (in most cases), and a new device (like a USB modem) shows up. The WWAN gear maker Option calls that feature "ZeroCD (TM)".

As you may have guessed, hardly anything of this is documented and Linux support by the better part of the makers is non-existent.
On the good side, most of the known devices do work in both modes with the available Linux drivers like "usb-storage" or "option" (an optimized serial driver for high-speed modems).
That leaves the problem of the mode switching from storage to modem or whatever the thing is supposed to do.

Fortunately there are things like human reason, USB sniffing programs and "libusb". It is possible to eavesdrop the communication of the MS Windows driver, to isolate the command or action that does the switching and to reproduce the same thing under the rule of Linux or the BSD variants.

USB_ModeSwitch makes the last step considerably easier by taking the important parameters from a configuration file and doing all the initialization and communication stuff.
From version 1.0.3 upwards there is a simple framework for integrating the switching with udev (the device manager) to make it fully automatic.

This tool is now on the way to be integrated into the big distributions; soon you should not be having to install from the source packages here anymore.
But I strongly advise against using packaged versions before 1.1.0..."
 
#159
Last month I bought a budget Acer Aspire 5517-5136 (which isn't fast enough to record audio BTW) that came pre-loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium (larded with a glut of trial-ware).

For a while I dual-booted with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to compare the two OSes and found that 10.04 runs faster, is MUCH more elegant, and of course doesn't have that OS-under-siege-by-malware feel.

I also found that Windows 7 exhibits a >~250ms audio latency between the '5517's mic input and its headphone out whereas Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has no audible latency at all.

Yesterday I reformatted the Acer's Windows executable and recovery partitions to a single ext 4 partition for use as a storage volume by Ubuntu.

For my uses Ubuntu 10.04 outclasses Windows 7 Home Premium to the point where dual-booting offers no discernible advantage.

My .02

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EDIT: It seems that this notebook IS fast enough for recording a few tracks via Audacity under both: the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (I'm now dual-booting both versions for comparison).

The reason I thought the 5517-5136 wouldn't record audio is due to an intermittent problem with ALSA in dealing with the 5517-5136's SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) sound card (which uses a Realtek ALC272 chip).

After Googling about I found...

[ubuntu] No sound with hp 6735s, ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

...which offers a few configuration file tweaks applicable to Ubuntu 9.10 and...

Link Removed

...whose more complex initial approach culminated in this March 18th, 2010 post by Jimbopix:

"Another win in the column for this thread. I think it was the gnome-alsamixer that solved it for me. Once that was installed I was able to select the Audigy Analog/Digital Output Jack from the list of check boxes and away went my sound.

Thanks so much for this post. The silence was making me go crazy, lol."

...which provided the apparent solution (install gnome-alsamixer from either the Ubuntu Software Centre or Synaptic Package Manager) to the intermittent audio recording problems I was experiencing on the Acer Aspire 5517-5136 under 32 bit and 64 bit Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

This being said the budget-priced, single-core 1.6 GHz AMD Athlon TF-20-equipped 5517-5136 is NOT a preferred option when choosing a notebook for recording audio (I was actually shopping for a netbook the day I bought mine).

There is a range of AMD Athlon&#8482; 64 X2 Dual-Core variants of this notebook which might appeal to those on a very tight budget but generally a machine sporting a fast Intel Core 2 Duo processor with nVidia graphics etc would make a better entry-level audio recording notebook.

As a point of interest however, the 5517-5136's Radeon HD 3200 Graphics works well with the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (and its included ATI Catalyst Control Center software) available from Ubuntu 10.04's System-->Administration-->Hardware Drivers.

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EDIT #2: Audio recording capability is misbehaving again. :eyebrow:

Oddly it seems to work fine when the 5517-5136 is connected to the Internet. More detective work is required...

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EDIT #3: I tried alsamixer (and Gnome Alsa Mixer) to make sure none of the audio inputs were muted and/or turned down yet I still can't record audio via my Acer Aspire 5517-5136's mic input unless I have either of my two USB-based wi-fi adaptors plugged into the '5517-5136 at boot time.

Said adaptors (which are both recognized by Ubuntu 10.04 BTW) are...

- a Wi-Fire (which uses the zd1211rw module that is part of the Linux kernel version 2.6.24 or later), and...

- an AirLink101 AWLL6080 300N Wireless USB Adapter (which uses a Ralink chip).

I've since discovered that although either one of these adaptors needs to be plugged at boot time in order to enable audio recording, it is not necessary for them to be connected to the Internet.

This has me theorizing that the bcmwl-kernel-source (which I had to install via System-->Administration-->Hardware Drivers to enable the 5517-5136's internal Broadcom BCM4312 wi-fi card) may be inhibiting audio recording somehow and that plugging in one of the other two USB-based wi-fi adaptors overrides this inhibition.

Uninstalling the bcmwl-kernel-source is impractical because I need the convenience of the Acer's built-in wi-fi card for Internet access at local public libraries (which is why I bought a notebook), and because I have a hard time believing that a wi-fi kernel module could interfere with audio recording in the first place.

I'm hoping that others who own an Acer Aspire 5517-5136 (whose budget price, 4 GB RAM capacity, 15.6" display, and S1 socket make it popular notebook make & model for low-cost processor upgrades) will have some insight into this unit's odd audio recording behaviour.
 

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