Setup Bluetooth with Feisty

Ever since I've published my post Sync Moto Razr with Laptop, a few people have asked me how I setup bluetooth on my ubuntu feisty laptop in the first place.

This setup was seamless and I got my motorola razr phone talking to my laptop in minutes. Here's what I had to do

• sudo apt-get install bluetooth gnome-bluetooth
• sudo apt-get install bluez-gnome bluez-utils
• Plugin my bluetooth USB dongle and I see it recognizes the device and starts up bluetooth-applet in the system tray.
  
• Search for laptop from the phone using bluetooth.
• To send a file from phone to laptop, startup bluetooth file sharing from Applications -> Accessories on ubuntu and then try sending a file. You should see a pop up dialog on your desktop asking you to either accept/reject the transfer.

• To send a file from your laptop to your phone, right click the file and then select sendTo.

• You'll receive a message on your phone asking you to accept the transfer.
  

Hope this helps. Please leave me a comment if this was useful or if you had to do something different. I'll be only glad to update this tutorial.

Compiz + Beryl = Compiz Fusion = Wow!!!

Sync Moto Razr with Laptop

Everytime, I changed my cellphone (yearly), I hated keying in all my contacts manually into the new cellphone. So its been a while since, I've been thinking of getting my cellphone to sync with my laptop. However, I tried multisync from the ubuntu repositories and gave up thinking that there wasn't a way to get this done using my Motorola Razr and my Feisty Laptop.

However today, I accidently hit on a webpage which talked about OpenSync framework and its plugins. Surprisingly, I saw it had a plugin 'moto-sync' for Motorola Phones. That was enough to stir me up for another shot and voilaaaa.... It turned out to be much simpler than I imagined.

So here's how to get this working with Ubuntu Feisty and Motorola Razr V3.

Note: You need to have the Phone already talking to your laptop via bluetooth, before doing this.

1. Add the following repository using synaptic package manager or by editing the /etc/apt-get/sources.list file.
deb http://www.in.fh-merseburg.de/~jahn/opensync-0.21/ feisty main
deb-src http://www.in.fh-merseburg.de/~jahn/opensync-0.21/ feisty main

2. Authenticate these repositories using the following
gpg --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net/ --recv-keys CB210090B029CB84
gpg --export CB210090B029CB84 | sudo apt-key add -

3. sudo apt-get install libopensync-plugin-syncml libopensync0 opensyncutils msynctool multisync-gui libopensync-plugin-evolution2 libopensync-plugin-moto

4. Start MultiSync-gui . Add a new group and give a meaningful name.

6. Add atleast two members - one for evolution using the evo2-sync plugin and the other for your razr using the moto-sync plugin. Configuration is self explainatory. In moto-sync, I've specified the mac address of my bluetooth phone.

7. Hit the Refresh button and this should syncronize your contacts in evolution with the ones on Razr.

But it seems like, it'll work only for contacts that are stored on the phone and not the SIM itself. Thats ok with me.

Life's Feisty!!!

So this weekend was spent getting Feisty Fawn installed on my laptop. I decided to do a complete reformat of my partition structure, getting rid of my current working versions of Dapper Drake and Edy Eft.

1. The installation was smooth however nothing extraordinaire as written and talked everywhere. The migration client is a smart tool for newbies coming from the windows world.

2. I have broadcom 4306 wirless card and the installation failed to install the firmware. So the much talked about improved wireless support didn't benefit me. So I had to install the fwcutter utility and the firmware to get wireless working. Also I see that the network manager doesn't connect back after hibernate :((

3. For a change I used Automatix to install all the codecs at one go. DVD playback is choppy and I am not able to set dma on the drive as before :(

4. mplayer firefox plugin didn't show streaming video. I had to right click on the window and configure to use x11 instead of xv to get it working. Don't remember doing this on previous releases.

5. Songs from http://www.raaga.com are not playable now using dev version of Realplayer 10.1 which was working for me before.

6. Banshee now works with my ipod without issues. Haven't yet installed Amarok.

7. My battery life hasn't improved yet - it still does better on WinXP.

8. The brightness control work out-of-the-box.

So the big question - So how does Feisty fare ?
The migration client, the automated codec installer, network-manager by default along with the extra bling and polish makes it a wonderful a great desktop distro for the newbee.

However, from my perspective it replaced a very well customized and efficient system, with a new system that still needs some tweaking. All said I still like it a lot.

Speed up Ubuntu ?

Well, I have no performance issues with ubuntu edgy on my Dell Inspiron 600M laptop. However, this article is a good read for anyone looking to speed up their ubuntu installation.

I've tried the open office suggestions and they seem to fasten the startup time. I am not sure if the others make much a difference. Anyway a good try for anyone looking to squeeze last bit of performance from your harware.

Play music from Raaga in Ubuntu using Firefox

A lot of people complain about raaga/musicindiaonline not working on their ubuntu/linux boxes. However, I really didn't care since I had moved onto new cleaner music blogs like dishant, musicmazaa and my favourite dhingaana.

However, when I found this solution to get raaga work, I decided to give it a try and voila... it worked.

This is what I did :
1. Downloaded the binary installer for a newer experimental Realplayer version 10.1.0.3013 from http://forms.helixcommunity.org/helix/builds/?category=realplay-current
2. Installed the realplayer in /opt/real/RealPlayer directory
3. Type about:config in firefox and set the following key=value pair
network.protocol-handler.app.rtsp=/opt/real/RealPlayer/realplay
network.protocol-handler.external.rtsp=true

So all you raaga fanatic here's one reason less to remain on windows....

Mark Shuttleworth talks about Ubuntu at Google..

Ubucon NYC

The second UbuCon ( an unconference of ubuntu enthusiastics ) was held at the new Google office in Manhattan last Friday Feb 16, 2007. As it was a working day, I had to take the day off from office to make the event and I did. A refreshing change from the mundane routine and a very interesting experience which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I was able to also login to my work pc from the conf and do some work as well. A double bonus :)

I liked the session by Mako on contributing to ubuntu and packaging. I am planning to actively involve myself in some packaging, bug fixing as and when I free from my office work. The most entertaining of all was the session on graphics.

Unfortunately, since I attended a few of the breakout session, missed all the freebies that were on distribution. I desperately was looking to get hold on the ubuntu book. Anyway, guess there's always a next time.

Did not get a chance to checkout the google office, but seemed to be a nice place to work. Photos are not allowed in the google office, so didn't try clicking any.

Flash 9 beta Ubuntu

Finally ... Flash 9 comes to Linux and I can't wait to try this out on my Dapper Drake tonight. Not that this has been a bottleneck of any sort but I've been found wanting while showing off my ubuntu laptop to my windows savvy friends primarily because of flash websites.
Found a way to install this on dapper using apt-get here: http://www.debianadmin.com/install-flash-player-9-beta-in-ubuntu.html
However, I guess i may go the manual way to get this done for now until the final release happens. Also I plan to reinstall Ubuntu Edgy on Oct 26 on release. So maybe I'll wait till then to go full fledged.
Check out the release announcement on Mike's blog - http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/10/beta_is_live.html

TV interview with Mark 'Ubuntu' Shuttleworth

From http://www.channel4.com/more4/news/news-opinion-feature.jsp?id=350 Well by now you must have figured that I am an ubuntu freek... if you wanna call that. Well its true that I completely adore Ubuntu Dapper Drake and use it on my laptop. I found this rare interview by Mark Shuttleworth on More4 News and learned a few interesting things about him. Check it out.

3D Linux Desktop

Found a nice video of the next generation 3D desktop technology on linux called XGL. I have XGL on my laptop and it simply rocks. Hope to make a video of mine and upload soon. Meanwhile watch this ..

My Linux Laptop

I have been a fan of the Linux/Open Source Community, since 1999 when I had my first taste of Linux at the National Institute of Oceanography. Since then I have installed/configured/customized many a linux distributions on various hardware. Every setup was fun and a challenge I relished especially at CFDVS, IIT Bombay where I dabbled with System Administration.

However, since joining TCS I have been stuck with Microsoft Windows. So when I bought my laptop a couple of years back, My first instinct was whats the best linux distribution around. I have been a loyal RH fan, So I decided on Fedora 3 and was surprised by the progress linux has made wrt desktop graphics and hardware support. Everything worked out of the box (except for wifi, mp3/dvd playback and proprietory codecs, which I could easily setup). However, I tried a few things to setup hibernation to work in futile. That basically stopped me from making FC3 the primary OS and was stuck with windows.

Thats when I decided to try ubuntu early this year. I wasn't really impressed with it (maybe I was used to the way Fedora worked). However, the virus/spyware/adware problems on my laptop and some free time from work, pushed me towards giving it another shot. This time, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Dapper Drake and wow.... I was blown away.

Installation was seamless, clean and simple. As usual rest of the stuff worked out-of-the-box except wifi. That was simple to fix. Lots of how-to-guides out there to solve ubuntu problem.
I don't like the brownish human theme, so I changed to a bluish one. Hibernation worked. XGL/Compiz was fabulous, however it slowed the desktop performance. So I turned it off. I found a replacement for DVDShrink on linux (K9Copy) -- a must-have for me. As for the rest of the softwares, I am spoilt for choice. The winner for me was the synaptic package manager which makes installation/upgradation of software simply a few clicks away.

Though I still spend time on Fedora, Ubuntu is more more likely to get windows-only users shift to linux. The best part, my wife's impressed too (I had to setup the mac-like animated dock on the desktop to win her) and now its very likely I can get rid of windows someday from my laptop.

First Look : Ubuntu Dapper Drake on My laptop