Linux Mint 10 and Huawei Mobile Broadband E153

I have installed Linux Mint 10 on my HP 2140 MiniNote, which feature following upstream components: Ubuntu 10.10, Linux 2.6.35, Gnome 2.32, Xorg 7.5.


Working with Huawei Mobile Broadband E153 was a breeze. It detected the broadband very easily.

Installing Linux Mint 8 Universal Edition on HP 2133

Installing Linux Mint 8 was a breeze on HP 2133 (WXGA). According to Linux blogs, HP 2133 has propriety Via Chrome 9 graphic controller which causes a lot of issues of getting the graphics to display properly for earlier version of Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

But with Linux Mint 8, the installation was very smooth. The only minor issue was that the Broadcom Wifi has to be installed via the "Hardware Drivers" found in the control panel.  Choose the "Broadcom STA wireless driver" and your HP 2133 will be up with no time.

Linux Mint 8 works flawlessly with mobile broadband such as the Huawei E220.

My favorite desktop OS with my favourite netbook.....

Force fsck on the next reboot

fsck is used for checking and repairing Linux file system. To force a fsck after a reboot, do the following

# shutdown -rF now

(where F - Force fsck on reboot)

Phoronix Test Suite

The Phoronix Test Suite is the most comprehensive testing and benchmarking platform available for the Linux operating system. This software is designed to effectively carry out both qualitative and quantitative benchmarks in a clean, reproducible, and easy-to-use manner. The Phoronix Test Suite consists of a lightweight processing core (pts-core) with each benchmark consisting of an XML-based profile with related resource scripts. Some of the key features are

• 120+ Test Profiles
• 50+ Test Suites
• Extensible (XML-based) Testing Architecture
• Optional Linux-based LiveDVD/USB Testing Distribution (PTS Desktop Live)
• Automated Test Installation
• Dependency Management Support
• Module-based Plug-In Architecture
• Integrated Results Viewer
• PNG, JPG, Adobe SWF, SVG Graph Rendering Support
• Autonomous Batch Mode Support
• Global Database For Result Uploads, Benchmark Comparisons
• HTML Documentation Covering Test Profiles, Module Framework
• Installed Software, Hardware Detection
• System Monitoring Support
• GTK2 Graphical User Interface + Command-Line Interface
• Runs On Linux, OpenSolaris, Mac OS X, & BSD Operating Systems

Inkscape - Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics Editor

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.'

Available for both Mac, Linux and Windows

Screenshots of Inkscape

How to pin Firefox to the previous version on Linux Mint

There are occasion where you may want Linux Mint to pin a specific version of firefox on Linux Mint, you can do the following:

# vim /etc/apt/preferences

Package: firefox
Pin: 3.0*
Pin-Priority: 800

1. "Package" refers to the name of the package
2. "Pin" refer to the criteria used for the pinning. In this case version 3.0 of firefox
3. "Pin-Priority": Priority to handle multiple pin entries

To get back your old programs, do the following:

apt-get upgrade 
OR
apt-get update

Monitoring net hogs using nethogs

Nethogs is a simple program that shows the send and receive rates per second organised by process.

To install, simply type on the command line

# yum install nethogs (For Fedora) 
# aptitude install nethog (For Linux Mint)

The default device to monitor is eth0. If you wish to use other device, simply type the argument after nethog

# nethogs eth1

To cycle through the available options for displaying the data transfer such as kilobytes, megabytes and bytes, just press m

For more information, click the nethogs project website

booh - photo album generator

Booh is a free software static Web-Album generator for Linux. It takes series of photos and videos, and automatically build static web pages to browse them.

Booh has a number of unqiue features compared to the other dynamic web-album genertor. The fulling listings is at the Booh website. Here a subset of the list

1. automatic rotation of portrait photos thanks to information read in .jpg file (EXIF)
2. immediate display of images (preloading in browser)
3. sub-albums support
4. multi-processor support to speed up thumbnails generation
5. Full video support, including thumbnailing (with seek time specification possibility) and transcoding
6. ..... and much more. See Booh Website
   

Compiz and Emerald to make Linux Desktop cool

Emerald is a custom window decorator that is shipped with Compiz. It is one of the most and easily configurable window manager.

Emerald is usually available as an additional package and has to install seperately.
# aptitude install emerald

Once installed you can launch the Emerald Theme Manager and choose your preferred theme or customise your look and replace. Once configured
$ emerald --replace

To import interesting theme, you can go to http://www.compiz-themes.org/ to download the latest theme. To load the theme, simply use the Emerald Theme Manager to import in the .emerald file

Awesome.

Using read-edid to extract useful information on PnP Monitor on Ubuntu or Linux Mint

Read-edid utility is a useful tool to help you  extract useful information on PnP Monitor.

According to the read-edid website, if you can't find the data to set your monitor up under XFree86, then read-edid is for you; it should auto detect all necessary info and should even provide a few modes with better refresh rates/resolutions than the standard VESA ones. However, as of now it won't do everything for you; you'll have to edit XF86Config yourself.

To install read-edid utility in Ubuntu or Linux Mint, just do a
# aptitude install read-edid OR
# apt-get install read-edid


The  data obtained by get-edid is in a binary format, so the parse-edid command is available to interpret  it  and  generate  a  human-readable block  of  text  information  that  can  also be included in an XFree86 XF86Config file. It is customary  to  invoke  get-edid  and  parse-edid  together  in  a pipeline.
# get-edid | parse-edid


More information:

1. Get-edid Website

Webkit Open Source Project

According to the WebKit Open Source Project website, WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications.
 
The lightweight browser midori is another example

# aptitude install midori

Using aptitude vs apt-get

Taken the Debian Wiki on Aptitude

Aptitude is an Ncurses based FrontEnd to Apt, the debian package manager. Since it is text based, it is run from a terminal or a CLI (command line interface). Aptitude has a number of useful features, including:

1. a mutt-like syntax for matching packages in a flexible manner
2. mark packages as "automatically installed" or "manually installed" so that packages can be auto-removed when no longer required
3. colorful preview of actions about to be taken
4. dselect-like persistence of user actions
5. the ability to retrieve and display the Debian changelog of most packagesAptCLI-like (= apt-get + apt-cache) command line mode ("aptitude install foo")
6. Score-based and (usually) smarter dependency resolver than apt-get 

For Linux Mint 6, it already come with Aptitude pre-installed. Some useful commands are

# aptitude (To run from the terminal)

After running it, use:

• F10 to access the menu and use aptitude. This is the main key.
• ? for help
• The 'up', 'down', 'left', 'right' keys to navigate.
• The 'Enter' key to select
• The '+' or '-' key to install/update or remove a package
• The 'g' key to preview/confirm actions
• 'q' to quit 

 You can also commands simliar to apt-get like

# aptitude install mplayer

# aptitude update mplayer

# aptitude upgrade mplayer

# aptitude remove mplayer
# aptitude search mplayer
# aptitude --help (To get the rest of the options)

What is the advantages of using Aptitude versus apt-get? There are a lot similarities and overlap. From what I have gather from the forum and discussion, the advantages of Aptitude over Apt-get are as followed:

1. Better Dependency Handling
2. Better at removing obsolete packages from your system
3. A different log presentation of the what packages have been affected during the installation / removal of package. On the other hands, apt-get tend to log what was present the information on the console during installation.
   

What's my verdict? I pretty neutral to both. But may stick to apt-get due to familiarity.... :)

Removing old package for Linux Mint

To remove the orphaned dependencies using apt-get

# apt-get autoremove

To clean old versions of packages using apt-get

# apt-get autoclean

To remove all packages files from the acahe using apt-get
# apt-get clean

Installing Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from the command line on Linux Mint

If you are planning to install JRE and the web browser plugin, you will need to do the following:

# apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

Looking at Xorg High CPU Usage Issue for netbook

If you are suffering from excessive slowness from your netbook or your old and slow notebook, you may want to tweak the CPU frequency governor to performance mode instead of the general mode. How do you do that? If you are using Linux Mint, you have to install a utilities called cpufrequtils

Step 1: Install CPU Frequency Utilities
# apt-get install cpufrequtils

Step 2: Query the CPU frequency governors
# cpfreq-info

Step 3: Force the CPU to use performance mode
# cpufreq-set -g performance

If this does not resolve the issues, you really have to look at other possibilities that is impacting your Xorg. Sometimes it could be your video drivers not the CPU governor issues....

User friendly command line shell - Fish

fish is a user friendly command line shell for UNIX-like operating systems such as linux.

Some of the cool features of fish. It uses:

1. Uses fresh sprinkling of colour to indicate files, directory, prompt
2. Tab Completion for your commands. After typing the first few letters of the command, you can tab and suggested commands are made available
3. You can pick out command history by typing a few letter and clicking the "up" key instead of cycling through the whole history
4. A html document is made available when yo type fish --help.

To install fish at Fedora

# yum install fish

# fish

Similarly for Linux Mint

# apt-get install fish

# fish

Enable Automatic Login for GNOME on Linux Mint

If you wish to speed up your boot-time and totally not concerned with security, you may want to enable automatic login.

For Linux Mint, my favourite Linux desktop, you can use the command line to enable automatic login.

# vim /etc/gdm/gdm.conf

-----------------------------------------

[daemon]

......

AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=(your userid to login)

-----------------------------------------

Alternatively, you can use the gdmsetup to configure. See pix below.

Installing Nvidia Drivers on Linux Mint

Nvidia Drivers requires you to exist the X-Windows environment completely before you can install the drivers properly. Instead of booting into console mode, you can do the following:

Step 1: Down the Nvidia drivers from http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Step 2: CTRL+ALT+F1 to take you into a non-X terminal

Step 3: Stop /etc/init.d/gdm (GNOME)
# /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Step 4: Install Nvidia Drivers
# ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run
(Install Nvidia drivers that match your graphics card and follow the installation wizard)

Step 5: Start /etc/init.d/gdm
# /etc/init.d/gdm start

Speeding up boot time by running boot processes in parallel for Linux Mint

If you are using Linux Mint and have multi-core computer at home and wishes to speed up boot time by running processes in parallel, you can tweaked Grub to take advantage of parallelism.

Step 1: Edit /etc/init.d/rc and change CONCURRENCY from none to shell
# vim /etc/init.d/rc
---------------------------
CONCURRENCY=shell
---------------------------

You should notice a performance improvement in your boot-time.

Installing Adobe Air on 32-bit Linux Mint

To install Adobe AIR on 32-bit Linux Mint, you can do the following:

Step 1: Use dpkg to enumerate adobe application
# dpkg -l | grep adobe


Step 2: Install Dependency for Adobe Flash
# apt-get install libnspr4-dev libnss3-dev libcurl3


Step 3: Download the Adobe Flash from http://www.adobe.com/
# dpkg -i install_flash_player_10_linux.deb


Step 4: Download the Adobe AIR from http://www.adobe.com/
# chmod 755 AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
# ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin