Quality article on Ubuntu’s past and present (at least up to the Unity debates). I won’t attempt to summarize it – the whole thing is a damned good read for any Ubuntu fan.
Archive for the Ubuntu Linux Category
Backup software for Ubuntu
Posted in Ubuntu Linux, Backups on November 22, 2011 by ubductedAPC lists some good backup software for Ubuntu. http://apcmag.com/the-best-ubuntu-backup-tools.htm
When did Ubuntu lose prominence?
Posted in Ubuntu Linux on November 18, 2011 by ubductedJack Wallen looks at the rumored changes and updates for Ubuntu 12.04 and offers his perspective on how they might help or hinder Ubuntu’s rise to prominence in the Linux world. Read more.
Since when did Ubuntu lose prominence? As far as I’m concerned, Ubuntu has never slipped. Some people may have been upset by Unity, but many people liked the change.
Interestingly, this same author writes about 10 things to love about Ubuntu 11.10. Not sure what’s up with that…
Backup or Sync Firefox 3 Bookmarks
Posted in Backups, Linux, Ubuntu Linux on March 20, 2010 by ubductedIt’s fairly easy to synchronize my firefox 3 bookmarks between two or more computers. If you’ve used firefox 2, your bookmarks were stored in the mozilla firefox folder in bookmarks.html. In firefox 3, your bookmarks are stored in places.sqlite in your profile folder in the main mozilla firefox installation folder.
Just cut and paste places.sqlite to a folder that will be backed up or synchronized. Then select the file, right click, and select Make link (for Ubuntu or Gnome users). This will make a soft link file which you can cut and paste back to where places.sqlite was originally (in your profile folder).
Rename the soft link to places.sqlite and you’re good to go.
Obviously, if you are synchronizing, this won’t “merge” your bookmark entries. One computer should be your main computer and the others just update when it synchronizes. I.e. don’t create bookmarks on your non-main computers. They’ll be overwritten.
Sync Palm Pilot Z22 to Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10
Posted in Ubuntu Linux on February 20, 2010 by ubductedIt’s always a battle to get those Palm devices working on Ubuntu. But you’ll be cooking with gas after the initial setup.
I accidentally buggered up my Ubuntu 9.04 machine and was forced to reinstall and forego my plans to upgrade in 2 months when 10.04 would be released. After a fresh Ubuntu 9.10 install, my first step was to get my trusty Palm Z22 synchronizing to Evolution. This is what worked for me:
Open a terminal and check if the “visor” kernel module is running:
lsmod | grep visor
If you don’t have output like this…
visor 15816 0
usbserial 36264 1 visor
…then you don’t have visor setup. Install it by editing /etc/modules
gksudo gedit /etc/modules
And add the following at the end:
visor
Save the file and close. Some How-To’s say to check if visor is running by doing
modprobe visor
When I do that, nothing is returned. Maybe that’s what it is supposed to do and maybe it throws an error if visor is not installed?
You’ll now want to add a rule to udev. Create a file called (I believe you can actually call this file “whatever-you-want.rules”). In a terminal, just type:
gksudo /etc/udev/rules.d/10-custom.rules
And add the following line:
BUS=”usb”, SYSFS{product}=”Palm Handheld*|Handspring*”, KERNEL=”ttyUSB*”, NAME{ignore_remove}=”pilot”, SYMLINK=”pilot”, MODE=”666″
Something else that may or may not be needed is to edit your udev devices.xml. In a terminal type:
gksudo gedit /usr/share/gnome-pilot/devices.xml
And make sure a line for Palm Z22 is there (I just changed the Zire 31 to Z22, because I saw somewhere that the Z22 product_id was 0061 but this file had it listed as the Zire 31.)
<!– Palm Z22 –>
<device vendor_id=”0830″ product_id=”0061″ />
Now some folks say you can just restart udev like so:
sudo service udev restart
While it does restart udev, I had to reboot. Perhaps the reboot made the visor module initiate properly.
To check things are working nicely, you can do two things.
1) Watch your /var/log/messages to see how the Palm is connecting. Open a terminal and type:
tail -f /var/log/messages
When you connect your Palm, you should see something like:
Feb 20 10:42:05 krypton kernel: [ 625.540523] usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 9
Feb 20 10:42:05 krypton kernel: [ 625.797189] usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Feb 20 10:42:05 krypton kernel: [ 625.802233] visor 5-1:1.0: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter detected
Feb 20 10:42:05 krypton kernel: [ 625.802310] usb 5-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Feb 20 10:42:05 krypton kernel: [ 625.802352] usb 5-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Feb 20 10:43:06 krypton kernel: [ 686.384045] usb 5-1: USB disconnect, address 9
Feb 20 10:43:06 krypton kernel: [ 686.384223] visor ttyUSB0: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0
Feb 20 10:43:06 krypton kernel: [ 686.384292] visor ttyUSB1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now disconnected from ttyUSB1
2) After the Palm is plugged in, you can view what the symbolic link (SYMLINK) /dev/pilot points to by typing in a terminal:
ls -al /dev | grep pilot
You should see something like:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2010-02-20 11:40 pilot -> ttyUSB1
Now you just setup your Palm OS Devices by going to System > Preferences > PalmOS Devices
Just follow the instructions and make sure you choose the following settings:
Timeout = 2
Device = /dev/ttyUSB1 (or /dev/pilot)
Speed = 57600 (It may also work with 115200)
Once you’ve connected, setup your conduits (the items you want to sync) and press hotsync on the device. Evolution will be updated accordingly.
For more information, you may also want to read some of the comments in the PalmDeviceSetup – Ubuntu help site and PalmZ22HowTo,
