Treo Sync Revisited

Ok, I am one of the last people who gripe about Linux. Seriously, I get infuriated when people come to Linux and give no effort to learn a NEW OS. Yes people, this is a different OS. It is NOT free Windows. If the masses, or at least 7 to 9% of them, would give Linux the same amount of learning time as they give to Apple, I am sure we would have an awesome market share. End of that rant.

Now to my gripe. My gripe is not really Linux, although I initially blamed Linux. Heck, that is the easiest thing to do; right? I have been syncing my Treo 650 with Linux successfully, on and off, for about a year now. I use a usb cable, and sync to both Jpilot and Evolution (via gpilotd).

Friday night, as I prepared to sync my phone, I went through my routine; open a terminal window and issue: tail -f /var/log/messages, so I can see my device get recognized and watch it get assigned. Open Jpilot and get ready to hit the Hotsync button after I initiate the Hotsync on the phone. When you initiate the Hotsync on the phone is when the device gets assigned. Hit Hotsync on the phone....nada. Nothing happens. Do this repeatedly, rinse, repeat. Nothing. WTF. Why can't things just work. Especially the stuff I have already had to hack together, that we then fixed, and no longer have to duct tape together.

When I started playing this sync game I had to write custom udev rules to make Treo get recognized, then the developers fixed that. Yay!

Then you had to have the right device, by watching the /var/log/messages so the apps, (Jpilot and pilotd) knew where to gather the info from. It could be /dev/ttyUSB1 or 3 or 5, depending on how incessantly fast I hit the hotsync button on phone. Device assigned in pairs, the latter is the one that communicates with apps; so assigned 0 and 1, 2 and 3, and so on.

Then the developers fixed that, so by setting the device in the apps as usb: it would communicate with the last assigned of the last pair. NICE. I guess many of us were clicking like lunatics, a practice I also deplore in others.

See, I have a little history with this nonsense. But, right about now, I just want it to work. Friday night it wouldn't work.

I look at my usb connector for the phone; many little pins, maybe a bad connection. Alcohol and cotton ball and clean the contacts on the bottom of the phone. No go. Clean more. Nope. Jiggle the connector. Hold connector to phone applying pressure up, down, left, right. More alcohol (same cotton ball, only had one). It connected. GREAT.

It dropped the connection.

That's it. I am done. No more physical (usb cable) hotsyncs. Time to get bluetooth working. Really working. Completely. Hotsync and all.

Previously, because someone else had questions about bluetooth, (which is usually how and why I get hacking stuff) I got bluetooth file sharing to work. Files from computer, and files to computer. Never tried to get hotsync working. Now it was imperative.

Coming next; Sync with bluetooth and bluetooth file sharing. Stay tuned.

Thinkpad A21m - Jaunty - Window Managers/DE's

This Saturday Project was the IBM Thinkpad A21m:

model name : Pentium III (Coppermine)
cpu MHz : 700.000

Mem: 121520

I think that this machine should be able to handle Ubuntu Jaunty, so I give that a whirl.

Unfortunately, Gnome Desktop environment put too much of a strain on it, so once again, it's time to find the best Window Manager/Desktop Environment for this particular machine.

The Players:
1) Gnome Desktop
2) Xubuntu Desktop (whole meta package)
3) lxde
4) Fluxbox
5) Openbox
6) E16 (Enlightenment)

The install was a full-blown Ubuntu Jaunty install. After the Gnome failure, I added Xubuntu-desktop, lxde, fluxbox, openbox, and e16. I then removed the ubuntu-desktop.

*Note* I chose to start with the full install to create a machine that was as end-user friendly as possible. I have in the past used the 'CLI only' install via the F6 install disk boot option. This CLI only option is fine for me, but again, for the typical end-user it may not be complete enough.

The Jaunty boot time is a very respectable ONE minute and 5 seconds.

Now to the Window Managers. A quick chart to show from login manager to complete window manager readiness:

Gnome (Ubuntu) 2 minutes 50 seconds
Xfce (Xubuntu) 2 minutes 20 seconds
Lxde 25 seconds
Fluxbox 24 seconds
Openbox 5 seconds
E16 5 seconds

The responsiveness of the above window managers seems to be directly proportional to their load times.

I do realize that xlde is an Openbox derivative, but that 20 extra seconds adds configuration that I feel may be relevant to the typical end-user; desktop icons, panel with launchers, etc.

I again, would probably use e16, although, openbox has me interested as well. But for the purpose of this machine's build,the typical end-user; the choice is lxde.

Application preferences so far:

File Manager: Thunar over Pcmanfm
Web Browser: Epiphany over Firefox

Van Laptop Mounted Professionally

This Saturday project was installing Ram Mount Laptop vehicle mount in the van. It went great. Test driven. Nice.

DSL to HD Install

Ok, so this time I am going to try Damn Small Linux to hard drive install with APT.

When done using this, it uses the Debian Woody repositories. Just have to be careful that updating and upgrading don't interfere with anything specifically compiled for the DSL os. The exact warning quote is very telling:

DSL is not derived purely from Debian, if you 'apt-get install' the wrong application you may break something, for instance, the X servers. You may have trouble if you try to upgrade your whole DSL distro to debian (apt-get upgrade)! Another caveat is that some of the dsl binaries use BusyBox multi call binary (instead of separate binaries for find, ls etc). It causes problems when used in some of the scripts inside certain debian packages, for example xpdf. Use apt to grab individual
packages, but only the expert should try major system upgrades.

I have now done this twice - once with 3.4.x and with 4.4.10 - both with apt enabled.

DSL 3.8. on:


DSL 4.4.10 on:

Custom Ubu System

Ubuntu Jaunty cli only ~ 377 megs

add xorg about 200 megs more - 575M

add xfce4 - not xubuntu desktop - 155mb will be used - 702M now

let's see....perfect. Now for some applications.

Web Browser: Dillo

Documents: Mousepad

Images: Gpicviewer

Nmap - have to have.


That's my basic install - using on a Dell Latitude LM 166MHz Ram:

Jordyn Gets Early Start

First things first. Another very nice release party for PA Ubuntu LoCo.
(Philly/Southeast region)

Food - An Install - Questions about switching people from other operating systems - all good stuff!

Always a good time, if you have the opportunity I recommend attendance. The empathy of other Linux users will recharge your need to geek.

The only jaunty preparation I did was to install the Ubuntu Net Remix to a usb thumbdrive so people could check it out. It was a big hit, would've been bigger if I would have remembered my ac adapter, but the 2 hours of playing with it and laughing at the big icons on a regular sized laptop were worth the effort. (by the way, it seemed to be the right size for my middle-aged eyes)

The following Sunday I updated my home laptop to jaunty with the assistance of my granddaughter Jordyn. Went super smooth, only some workspace switcher issues.

The release party had reminded me of how well Compiz works as an advocacy tool - you don't have to like it - you don't have to use it - but believe me: it grabs people attention! So, I Compiz'd up my gnome session. I rarely use gnome anymore, preferring to use xfce, the Xubuntu desktop, but since the majority of users are using gnome, I like to have it a session change away.

Compiz and the compiz-config are super easy to turn a capable device into a cube spinning terror. Also, btw, no fglrx driver for jaunty, would the open radeon driver work? YES! 3d effects were NO PROBLEM with the open driver.

jimf@dell6000:~$ glxgears
3834 frames in 5.0 seconds = 763.588 FPS

I'll take it!

Still one Gnome problem: Nautilus would crash - opening nautilus from terminal pointed me to the preferences segment of gconf. I looked at the info in the gconf-editor and kept missing that one of the boolean options was set to 'false' - DOH - 'false' was interpreted as a string, and indeed, NOT A BOOLEAN VALUE. Reset the key, and all was well, a fully functioning, cube spinning, advocacy heroin, Gnome session.

Very nice.

Now, what desktop for Jordyn?

Dell Latitude LM

Ok so after thinking I had some bad hard drives, and that the power supply on my imaging box was fried, I am back on to refurbishing the laptops that I save from the recycling pile.

The hard drives were ok, I did FRY another 2.5 to 3.5 ide adapter. My local computer parts store didn't have any. MicroCenter to the rescue!
MC only had one left, the plan was to buy two so I always have a spare.
Ebay and the Hong Kong parts to the rescue, 2 for half the price of 1 !!

Back in business. Two Dell Latitude LM's,

(SPECIFICATIONS:
Pentium/166 MMX, 256Kb of pipeline-burst cache, 40Mb of RAM, 1.6Gb hard disk, ten-speed CD-ROM, 12.1in SVGA TFT colour screen, 1.1Mb NeoMagic graphics, removable floppy drive, ESS AudioDrive ES1688 audio, integrated stereo speakers, 115Kbits/sec infrared serial port, one Type III or two Type II PC Card slots, lithium ion battery)

it's real nice when I get common machines, makes setting them up easier after figuring out the first one.

No boot - have to add pnpbios=off to boot line.

My default Puppy Image installed, but the video resolution on these old boxes was too low to run in an acceptable manner. Try DSL - couldn't get any video to work, let alone be acceptable. Ok, no problem, I'll make these cli only machines for people who want to learn command line.

Install Ubuntu CLI only Hardy - about 350 megs installed - NICE.

The tty font sucks - ugly - hard to read - dpkg-reconfigure console-setup to change tty fonts to something acceptable - terminus - clean.

Hmm, I know I can increase resolution and add a desktop; more to come.