Ubuntu Reference Book

This article is part of my series on exploring Linux. In my last article I played with a thumb drive and a memory card reader in my laptop. I went on to learn about ejecting the devices and formatting them.

I've enjoyed writing this blog as I learn Linux and I like to think that I am helping people out there who are going through the same process. But one irritating thing about my blog and others is that it is focused on very small pieces of the Linux puzzle. It is hard to see the big picture or put a lot of the information in context.

This week I found a wonderful book that may help. Check out the Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference!


It provides a great overview of Ubuntu while also helping a beginner accomplish typical things like actually installing the product. It answers many questions I have and touches many of the areas I have been dealing with.

Not only is it a cheap $10 book, but you can also download it as a free PDF with the author's blessing!: http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com/download.html

Give it a read and then come back to my blog as I continue to struggle with things that don't behave as they should.

Thanks for the memory

This article is part of my series on exploring Linux. In my last article I had fun using bluetooth to connect to my Nintendo Wiimote. Today I decided to try connecting to some memory devices. I wasn't too worried about connecting to USB thumb drives, but I was wondering if Ubuntu would make use of my memory card reader.

First up - the memory card reader! My HP tx2600 series laptop has a built in reader. I stuck in an xD memory card from my Olympus camera and instantly received this message:


Nice! A clear message that gave me clear choices. I couldn't ask for more than that. I went on to easily browse and use the memory card.

Next up - a USB thumb drive! My laptop came with a free CA Internet Security Suite (for Windows) on an autorun thumb drive. Let's see what happened when I stuck that in:


Another clear message and autorun is supported! This is much better than the behaviour in XP that either just autoruns or doesn't autorun at all depending upon previous settings. Vista also offers a similar message to this; albeit more visually confusing and with more options. It would actually be nice if Ubuntu offered to let me browse the drive like Vista does - but then again, I merely have to click elsewhere on the desktop anyway.

I really liked the way these two devices were presented in the File Browser (Ubuntu's version of Windows Explorer):


When the media has no name, the File Browser lists the device's size as a way of identifying it. Makes sense to me. At the top of the viewing pane it leaves the option to autorun the thumb drive just in case. I got the same behaviour when browsing the xD card - the option to open F-Spot was left at the top.

The thing I liked best about browsing the media devices was the eject icon next to each device. One should always eject or "safely remove" media to make sure disk caches are flushed, etc. (I don't know that this is a Linux requirement, but I imagine it is). This was an issue I've had with XP. I regularly disconnect media and have to dig down through a context menu or task bar icon to get the job done. In Ubuntu I just click the eject icon. It knows what to do differently if it is a CD, USB or memory card. No muss, no fuss - it doesn't even ask for confirmation. If you clicked eject in error, just click on the device entry that is still listed and it will automatically remount it for you. This is such a little detail, but I really liked it.

I should also mention the eject icon on my network share (called "netware" above). That icon lets me quickly unmount my network connection as well.

I did manage to find a slight hitch with my memory exploration however. Remember how my thumb drive came with an autorun of CA on it? I just wanted a blank drive. I could have just delete the files, but I decided to format the drive instead so I could remove the CA label it had. I couldn't find any way within the File Browser to format or rename the device! At first I thought that was rather dumb, but then it made sense. The only things we really needed to format regularly were floppies - when was the last time you held one of those? Maybe I should be asking why Windows still gives me the option of formatting...

So how do I format my thumb drive? Apparently there are the typical commandline methods, but I read about a graphical interface called GParted and decided to give that a try. I fell into a very typical Linux/Ubuntu routine:

• I couldn't find a shortcut to GParted. That isn't unheard of for a GUI app - particularly an administrative type app like this.
• I brought up a Terminal window and tried "gparted".
• It wasn't present, but Ubuntu provided this helpful message: "The program 'gparted' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install gparted"
• Isn't that helpful! So I did just that. The application came tumbling in.
• I typed "gparted" once again. This was the response:
  

• Again, very helpful. GParted is treating this very much like an admin task because floppies just aren't the norm anymore. I knew how to become root. I put sudo to good use once again by typing "sudo gparted". I was rewarded with the GParted interface:
  

• The graphic jumps ahead a little bit. In the graphic I have already asked to have my drive formatted as FAT32. It is just waiting for me to confirm the action.

There were actually some interesting choices from this interface:

You may notice that I am formatting the device /dev/sdc. That label was new to me. At first the only way I could tell it was my thumb drive was by the size. But there was a subtle detail a neophyte like me missed. GParted listed information about the various partitions - including its Mountpoint (/media/disk-1 in this case). This is the same information File Browser presented in the Location field at the top of the interface. Very subtle, but it is enough and from now on I'll know.

The second interesting choice was for the type of Filesystem. Rather than just FAT, FAT32 or NTFS as I am used to in Windows, I get a whole lot more in Linux! Here were my choices: EXT2, EXT3, FAT16, FAT32, Linux-Swap, ReiserFS. That is quite the selection! There were even 7 other partition types that didn't apply in this situation. (I think I'll just stick with FAT32 :-)


In the end, I'm very impressed with the way Ubuntu handled my access to my memory card and thumb drive. I'm fine with the way it handles formatting. I'm very impressed with the way the operating system held my hand through the formatting process. Let's face it, my hand was definitely held through what could be a daunting process - and all without the help of an annoying wizard!

Wiimote goodness

This article is part of my series on exploring Linux. In my last article I was pleased at how well Linux handled the docking/undocking of my laptop. My network and dual monitor settings were reconfigured optimally for each scenario.

Today I came across the blog of Matt Cutts who describes how to connect a Wiimote to a Linux PC (a Wiimote is the game controller from a Wii console). I decided to take time out and give it a try.

Long ago I was impressed by the potential of the Wiimote as a control device when I saw Johnny Chung Lee's projects. He came up with some wonderful multi-touch, whiteboard and head tracking VR applications for Windows. More recently, David Phillip Oster, a Google engineer, made an application for the Mac that surfs Google satellite maps using a Wii balance board.

I followed Matt Cutts instructions and had my Wiimote connected in no time:

• I got and installed the application from the terminal by typing: sudo apt-get install wminput wmgui lswm
• I ran lswm and it returned the message: Put Wiimotes in discoverable mode now (press 1+2)...
• lswm was able to properly detect my Wiimote when I pressed 1+2!
• I launched the GUI with the command: wmgui and this is what I saw:
  

The application was able to read all the information being sent from my Wiimote and attached Nunchuck! Very cool. Now I just need to wait for people to start writing great applications that use the information - like those above that were made for the Windows and Mac environments.

BTW, here is a good articles on how to use a WiiMote in Windows: http://wiihacks.blogspot.com/2006/12/howto-use-wii-mote-in-windows-as-your.html. Here is a Windows application similar to wmgui: WiinRemote.

(Reading the Windows how-to is a very good demonstratation of the difference between the Windows and Linux world -- Half the article deals with how to overcome the limitations of the Microsoft bluetooth implementation and various licensing restructions. Those restrictions just didn't exist in Linux. Rather, in Linux the problem is a lack of people generating useful apps for the controller thus far.)

Remember my problems getting my dual-monitors to work as one seemless desktop? Well, it's been working great lately, but there are some caveats. The wmgui application triggered some of them...

When I ran wmgui, I also got the message: Xlib: extension "RANDR" missing on display ":0.0". The ATI Xinerama feature that allows me to move windows between displays seems to break the RANDR extension (xrandr). The "problem" didn't seem to affect me at all until I did a screenshot for this article. Before I ran wmgui, I could get a screenshot that included my whole desktop spread across both screens. After running wmgui and getting the error, I was only able to get a screenshot of the first monitor and the left half of the second. Not a big problem, but it bears further investigation.

I found more details here https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=431727 where others were troubleshooting similar problems. Part of my problem may be that xrandr screens cannot be larger than 1920x1200 but my overall desired size is 2960x1050.