Linux Mint 7 (Gloria) on EeePC 901

I'd used earlier versions of Mint quite some time ago and thought I'd try it again, but this time on my EeePC 901.
Really, though, I had too much stuff on this little machine, the majority of which I never used. So, I had Xandros, Ubuntu, Senryu, Haiku, DSL, Puppy, TinyCoreLinux and Moblin. That's eight OS's all squished into the <20MB of HDD space.
Now I decided that it was time for a change. So, my current arrangement is to have just four OSes: Ubuntu, Xandros, Haiku and Linux Mint.
Actually, I'm not sure if I'll stay with Xandros as it too is never used. I really don't like these simplified, Windows-like versions of Linux such as Moblin and UNR.
In any event, Linux Mint was very simple to install (3.4 GB /, 2.5 GB /home) using Unetbootin. Indeed, the install and subsequent operation, once again, showed me how similar Mint is to Ubuntu (on which it is based).
Indeed, up to now, I really haven't seen anything much to convince me that I'm not using Ubuntu, it is just so similar. Perhaps the only difference is the colour scheme and sounds.
Wireless worked OOTB and no problems of any kind were met in getting it set up.
I installed Kiba-Dock without problems. The only strange thing here was that dragging icons/apps from the Mint menu didn't produce icons in the dock. Instead, it was necessary to drag the icon/app to the main panel and then drag from there to the Kiba dock. Weird.
Other than that, just about everything works without me needing to do anything including sound, video, webcam.
And if you know Ubuntu, you can assume that Linux Mint won't surprise you in anything.

Still can't get Senryu raw image to boot

I've been using Senryu for quite some time. First I used the VMware image in a virtual machine.
While this always worked fine it was just a little slow.
So, I tried the raw image available on the same site. This was easy to install and make bootable and was so much faster than the VM. So this became the standard.
However, of late (actually for the last three months) I haven't been able to get the raw Senryu image to boot and I've tried three different builds up to the latest today (r31445).
Strangely, every time I've had this problem with Senryu, the latest Haiku raw image, installed in exactly the same way, booted perfectly.
I've posted to the Senryu 'forum" about this but no answer yet. I'll post if I can resolve this.

This is a great photo

After explaining yesterday how I was able to create a B&W background in an otherwise colour shot, I just couldn't resist posting this picture.
To get this effect, I "monochromed" the background in Gimp 2.6 as before but this time I also applied a Gaussian Blur (Filters>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur) with horizontal and vertical Blur radii of 250 each.
Finally I went to Filters>>Artistic>>Cartoon and applied the default Mask radius and Percent black to try to produce a 3D effect.
No colour enhancement or changes whatsoever were made to the child's image.
The result is as you see. Looks great as a Desktop Wallpaper.

UbuntuOne -- got my invite

Yes, today I received an invitation to try out UbuntuOne which helps you store, sync and share your files across any number of your computers.
You get 2 GB of free storage or you can pay US$10 (about €7) per month to get 10 GB of storage.
Of course, this is not a new concept but I'd feel lot more confident entrusting my files to Ubuntu than to some startup that might not be around when I want to retrieve my stuff (that 1 TB of free storage from Oosah sure sounded great until they went belly up).
Installation seems very straightforward. However, I couldn't get the ubuntuone-client-gnome package to install in Opera 10. Although the PPA install was fine clicking on the Install button just did nothing in Opera.
The proceedure suggests using Synaptic to install this package for "non-Firefox" browsers but it did not show up in my Synaptic on two different computers.
However, it installed without problem in Firefox (3.0.11).
Nevertheless, getting it to start from in Firefox wasn't that easy in that hitting the UbuntuOne button in Applications>>Internet didn't seem to do anything. However, running "ps -e" in a terminal did indeed show that the client was running. I just couldn't access it.
This article and this one too describes a bug that may be involved. They do say that the bug will be squashed very soon, perhaps tomorrow.
So, to get the UbuntuOne webpage to open I had to kill it (kill "process number") and then run this command from a terminal:

ubuntuone-client-applet --signup

Once opened I could add my computer (MacBook with Ubuntu 9.04) to the list of included computers. Then I went ahead and uploaded some stuff. Absolutely no problems.
I later installed UbuntuOne on my EeePC 901 (Ubuntu 9.04) and was easily able to access and download the files I had uploaded on the Mac.
Ironically, UbuntuOne is easy to open and work with in Opera 10 so it seems it just can't be installed in this browser.
All-in-all, this looks a very nice tool that has the mark of reliability being from Ubuntu.
[Edit: I've been using UbuntuOne for a few days now and really like it. Haven't seen any serious problems although it'd be nice to have an upload progress bar. Great stuff, I'll certainly be using this]

Turn photo background to B&W

This is a really nice effect that I picked up in this PolishLinux blog post. However, I have to admit that I just couldn't follow this guide. In step 1 he says to duplicate the background layer. Well, I could see how to duplicate "a" layer but not specifically the background layer.
Also, the dialog box that he shows in this step I just could not find.
Nevertheless, I did very much like the effect and went about it in my own amateur way. As you can see from the pictures, however, it actually turned out very well.
Here's what I did:
1. Fire up the Gimp (I'm using Gimp 2.6) and open the photo you want to alter with File>>Open
2. Now go to Tools>>SelectionTools>>Free Select
3. This is the hard part; use the mouse to outline as carefully as you can the object (or selection of objects) that you want to stay coloured. Note that it's very important that the tool line completes a loop. In other words, it's got to finish exactly at the point from where it started. This ensures that you have created a fully enclosed space. Therefore make sure you remember wher you started from as failure to do so can lead to some frustration.
4. At this point, just to get your coloured object to stand out even more, you might want to consider sharpening this part of the image. You can do this by going to
Filters>>Enhance>>Sharpen
I found that sharpness values in excess of 75-80% start to give ugly, excessively distorted images so I generally chose 75%
5. Next go to
Select>>Invert to focus on the part of the image you want in monochrome.
6. Finally go to
Colors>>Desaturate
I always chose Lightness and then OK.
7. Next save your file.
Almost certainly you won't be able to do this in just one shot, so save this first attempt under a different name and open this new photo in Gimp.
Now use exactly the same procedure to continue touching up the shot.

Possibly this sounds over-complicated but to put some perspective on this, the changes seen the shots I appended here took no more than 10 minutes in total.

Cool new feature in my blog -- SmarterFox

Yeah, I've added SmarterFox which can be used for searching any word or expression that you'd like to know more about.
So, to bring up this feature just highlight the word(s) that you want and mouse over the highlight.
Now a series of buttons should appear which allow you to do a search in Google, OneRiot, Twitter or do a Google Wiki search. Note that this latter is labelled as a search of Wikipedia which is incorrect. A button to twitter the highlight is also presented although this seems a little strange -- why would you want to twitter a single word? Might have to try this to test what exactly it does. Maybe it RTs the whole article.
Compatible browsers for SmarterFox include Firefox, IE8, Google Chrome and Safari. However, I'm using it in Opera 10 and it's fine.

Yet another Twitter client -- Spaz

This all started because I wanted to see what Adobe Air apps were useful in Ubuntu Jaunty. Actually, up to now I have never really found Adobe Air apps that have been any more than mildly amusing, but largely unnecessary widgets.
Anyway, this post details how to get Adobe Air working (I aready had it working though) and where to find the apps.
As the post suggested I tried Spaz (primarly because absolutely none of tthe others seemed even remotely useful. The poster points out that Adobe Air apps have the advantage that they can be run without opening a browser. Quite honestly, it's not clear to me why this is advantageous.
Anyway, Spaz is not bad but doesn't seem to allow tweets although RTs, @replies and DMs are allowed (actually this seems strange and I'll need to confirm).
However, a major drawback is that replies to me don't seem to be available. This is probably the main, if not the only reason, that I find the other two Twitter clients useful.
(Edit: For some reason, @replies didn't show up when I used Spaz the first few times but now they do. They're all jumbled together with tweets and DMs. However, you can toggle between Tweets and @Replies/DMs. So that's a lot better)
Notifications (presumably libnotify) show up when there are additions to my timeline which is good. I'll probably add mumbles here on my EeePC 901 (where I've installed Spaz) as I prefer the mumbles bubble notifications to the ones provided by libnotify.
The GUI is nice and colourful and has a variety of themes although the Spaz theme seems by far the best to me. I'll try it out for a few days to see how it compares to Gwibber and Tweetdeck.

Gwibber in Jaunty

Although I've been using Tweetdeck, principally to gain access to replies to my tweets, I tried out Gwibber today.
Gwibber is included in Jaunty's repos so it's very easy to install.
Nice colourful, but small, GUI where you can see friends tweets and replies under separate tabs. DMs are included with @replies under the Replies tab. Can send tweets and replies from GUI but not DMs. One thing I didn't like is that no visible "characters remaining" is available when writing tweets although everything turns RED if you exceed 140.
A surprise was that mumbles-type notifications appear when Twitter is refreshed. This is useful as you can quickly see if anything interesting has shown up without having to actually open Twitter.
Not sure what the connection with mumbles is but there's no Gwibber plugin in mumbles. It's probably using the libnotify plugin but I can't be sure about that for the moment.
Now I found that Gwibber tended to blank out quite frequently and nothing showed in the GUI for a while (maybe 5-15 minutes). Seems this is because of the limited number of Twitter API calls that are allowed (100 per hour).
This is more easily seen in Tweetdeck with the remaining API calls always shown.
The fact that I was running both Gwibber and Tweetdeck didn't help. Plus I had Gwibber updating every minute. I see how things pan out in time with this and then choose either one or the other.
But, all-in-all, Gwibber is useful.

Trying to get twitter plugin to work in mumbles/Jaunty

I already written about my use of the mumbles notifier in Ubuntu Jaunty. Up to now, I really only the Gmail plugin working as I don't use any of the other apps for which there are plugins available.
However, I do use Twitter and was anxious to get the twitter plugin installed and working.
But, even though the install went smoothly, running "python twittercheck.py" consistently produced "20 new messages" irrespective of what I set the Update Interval to.
Having said that just a very few times I saw 19 or even 18 new messages. But letting it run it just went back to 20.
Looking into the Python coding of twittercheck.py shows that the key element in the script is "api.GetFriendsTimeline".
But according to the Twitter API Wiki, this api just produces the "Returns the 20 most recent statuses posted by the authenticating user and that user's friends". So, now ya see where the 20 comes from.
Now the script uses "len(timeline)" where timeline is derived from the api. So according to the above this can never be anything other than 20 which is more or less what I've seen.
I emailed the coder guy and he told me he'd look at it when he got back from vacation.
However, it seems to me to get this to work I need to try to find an api that will actually count the new tweets since the last update.

Installing and tuning the Mumbles notifier in Ubuntu Jaunty

Ubuntu 9.04 is working very well on my MacBook but I like to experiment. I came across Mumbles in this Lifehacker post and decided to try it out.
Actually, it seems that you must use mumbles-0.4.2 or later in Jaunty and the plugins must be compiled using Python 2.6.
This version is available here as a SVN checkout and requires no further setup or configuration.
Unfortunately, very few plugins seem to be available for Mumbles and these include much that I don't use such as Rhythmbox, Evolution and Pidgin.
However, there is a plugin for Twitter and I found one for Gmail here. Because the deb package was compiled with Python 2.5, it won't work in Jaunty. So, you need to download the source and build the plugin within Jaunty. This will provide GmailMumbles-0.1-py2.6.egg which you then must copy (or move) to ~/mumbles0.4-branch/src/plugins.
Next grab the script called gmail.py from the untarred package here, make it executable and open it in a text editor to change the Gmail user and password in the Options section of the script.
You can now run the script with this command

python gmail.py

and if you send yourself an email, you should get (within 2 minutes) a pop-up notification.
To get this to startup at boot, I wrote a small bash script to include in Ubuntu's Startup Applications and this works fine. The script is:

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/paul
sleep 30
python gmail.py

Note that the script didn't work for me without the 30 second delay although perhaps it would have been better to put the sleep before the cd command.
Then I came across a patch that allows the notifications to be accompanied by a sound which is actually very useful. The patch is available here (download link using "Save Linked Content as.."
Then move it to ~/mumbles0.4-branch/src and apply the diff file as a patch using

patch -p1 <mumbles_notification_sounds.diff

Now restart mumbles and you should see a Enable Sound box in the Preferences dialog. If you remembered to install python-pgame as explained in the forum post and you've enabled sound, the next time you get an email you'll here a short but pleasant sound.
So now mumbles is starting to look good. However, one thing I don't like about the Gmail notification is that you need to be at your computer to know if you've got mail or not. If you come back after being away for a while there's no persistent indication of new mail as there is with Gmail-Notifier. So, you'll need to open Gmail to see if you've got any new mail.
Another thing is that Gmail-Notifier allows you to click on the tray applet which then shows you who the new mail is from. The mumbles version doesn't provide this facility.
I've also tried to get the mumbles Twitter notifier working but without much success up to now. Well, it works but it seems to grossly overestimate the number of new tweets. I think I know why but I'm not sure how to fix it.
But as it's getting late here I'm going to write about this tomorrow.

I set up Prey on my MacBook

Prey seems a useful, free and very easy to set up app that might just help you get your laptop back if it ends up in the hands of thieves.
Seems that you configure it to recognize an URL which it checks for every time it runs (still not sure how frequent this is bit lets assume it's something like every hour).
Then if your machine gets stolen, you create the URL and Prey will send data, which might even include a webcam image of whoever is sitting in front of it, to your mail address.
Sounds good.

BBC iPlayer

In spite of what many people think, Ireland is not in fact in the UK. Therefore, the famed BBC iPlayer doesn't work here.
However, connecting to the internet via a proxy server based in the UK will "fool" the iPlayer into thinking that I am indeed a Brit.
Here's a link that explains how to do this although what I did was just a little simpler.
So, I open Firefox (which I rarely use being an ardent Opera fan) and configure to change to a proxy server as follows:
Edit>>Preferences>>Advanced>>Network Tab>>Settings
In the dialog that opens, click the radio button for Manual proxy configuration. Add the server IP and port to the HTTP boxes and check to use this proxy server for all protocols. Click OK and try to open the BBC iPlayer in Firefox. In my case it worked perfectly.
As the link mentions, not all proxies work. So having selected a UK proxy from this link, you must be prepared to be disappointed before you find one that works well.
In my case, the first although listed as a UK proxy seemed to shift itself around the world very frequently which made it unsuitable. The second stayed in the UK but was abominably slow.
Then I came across 91.186.1.120:80 and this worked fine. Whether it will always work fine is hard to say at this stage.
Just to console any Brits who might be reading this, I essentially don't watch TV at all and I'm extremely unlikely to avail of this new-found font of culture and information. I really only did this to see how easy it was.

Amarok in Ubuntu Jaunty

I used to love Amarok in earlier versions of Ubuntu. It worked great not just to play back my own recorded music but also streamed Last.Fm great.
These days, however, I tend to use VLC simply because it plays all music file types without any problems.
However, I wanted to see how the new version of Amarok (2.1.1) worked in Jaunty.In a word it's "crap". Such a huge disappointment.
Although it's very much like it used to be, once I got over the failure to play, or even recognize .wma files by installing libxine-ffmpeg, I found that it just takes ages (10 minutes) to read my 52 GB of music files. Not only this, but it seems to have to do this every time that Amarok starts up.
Then I found this blog post recommending installing Amarok 1.4 in Jaunty because the updated version is, well, crap.
Actually, for me Amarok 1.4 is worse than the later version in that is seems to take 1-2 hours to read all of my 52 GB of music. Now, admittedly all of this is on an old external HD, but I used to be able to use this with Amarok with hardly any noticeable delays.
OK, maybe I haven't configured things optimally, but the omens are not good, so I don't thoink I'll be using Amarok again in the near future.
Incidentally, this post is useful in pointing to some other useful commands for when Amarok starts getting obstreperous.
OK, now please excuse me as I've got to get back to VLC.

CLI apps to check what's using your bandwidth

Just came across a number of very useful commands to figure out what slowing down your internet.
First is iftop which is similar to top, htop and iotop and breaks down all of the processes with internet connections.
Others are iptraf, netstat-p and nethogs.
Run them as sudo for more information. More details here.
For network devices other than the defauls eth0, run iftop and nethogs as

sudo iftop -i wlan0

sudo nethogs wlan0

Mumbles notifier

Came across this in Lifehacker the other day and thought I'd try it out.
The first thing is that the mumbles 4.1 deb that's in the Lifehacker link doesn't actually seem to work. Actually there's a forum post on the same topic where the recommended fix is to use the svn 4.2 version. However, can't seem to find the link now. If I find it later I'll edit it in.
So, I did this and it works for me.
Problem is though that there are very few plugins of any value to me. Mumbles (using Bubble notifier) shows when I'm resuming from sleep but this is hardly of value.
Also there's a plugin for Rhythmbox which I show in the screenshot. However, VLC is my media player of choice.
There's also a Gmail notifier here but I haven't been able to get it to work yet.

Opera Unite in WinXP

Now, you may know that I am not a Windows user, but occasionally it might be necessary to try it just to test something.
Opera Unite is such a marvellously promising service that the very poor performance I saw when I tried it a few days ago was a major disappointment. Knowing that Opera doesn't quite see eye to eye with Linux, I tried Unite from Windows XP on my old Dell Dimension 4550.
Now first I should mention that it's not just me that has this problem and seems to be an Opera server thing.
Note that temporary respite from the failure of Unite to launch its services may be obtained by:
1. Unchecking uPnP in Configuration (and re-chececking if it happens again)
2. Watching for a Yellow warning triangle on the Unite icon at the bottom left of the page and restarting Unite when directed.
In any event when I tried it today from Windows XP, it actually worked quite well (although by no means perfectly) and I got all of the services to work, yes, every single one File Sharing, Fridge, Media Player, Photo Sharing, Web Server (although I never tried The Lounge).
I was very happy that the Media Player worked. It'll be really interesting to play music from my Mac in Ireland when I'm in Brazil next month. That should impress a few people.
However, I found that when downloading a file (.tgz) while in File Sharing, the download rate was very slow (typically 20 KB/s although varied between 3-40 KB/s).
Earlier I had "woofed" the same 93 MB file from the Mac to the Dell at 2200 KB/s.
A consequence of this low transfer rate is that streaming for Media Player is too slow so that the music breaks up. Playing a second time, however, is perfect.
But, given that Opera Unite is actually in Alpha (not Beta as Opera 10 is), it looks like this could really be a wonderful service when all the major bugs are squished.

Music recording/mixing on EeePC

Came across this very nice guide (actually it's just the first part of a series) to music production using the EeePC. Although this is not quite working for me yet, I'm amazed at the absolute panoply of activities and possibilities available on this tiny machine that cost me less than €300.
Also, it's normal for me in this blog to just write about what I have actually already done. However, this is an exception and here I'm going to outline what I intend to do or, more correctly, what guides I'm going to use.
The first guide outlines how to install all the software you need for this.
Note that I couldn't get coonection to the Jack server WITHOUT booting to the -rt kernel.
This next article describes, in quite some very simple detail, how to write clients for Jack (Jack being an acronym for Jack Audio Connection Kit rather than some guy's name).
Next we need something to produce the sounds. So, here we need a tutorial for Ardour.
I'll start this over the weekend.

Opera 10 torrent client.

I love the Opera browser and have used it in all my OSes for many years.
Opera 10 Beta is great although I find that Opera Unite operates, at present, very laboriously. However, I'm really looking forward to using it when the bugs have been removed.
But, one big surprise for me is that the Opera bittorrent client, which I've also used very much without serious problem, has now become virtually unusable (only since I upgraded to Build 4440). Now when I try it, Opera crashes after a few minutes of bittorrent use.
So, out of exasperation I changed over to use Transmission which comes with Ubuntu 9.04. Now, no problem and possibly even faster download (although this would need verification).
A problem I've had with the Opera client for a long time is that the download stops apparently before the MB total has been reached. Stopping and restarting the download may eventually lead to completion of the download, although restarting the browser gives completion more quickly in my experience.
However, with Transmission, no similar problem encountered.
So, until these serious bugs are ironed out, I'll stay with Trasmission.

TweetDeck -- didn't know can't see @replies

Yeah, today I tried TweetDeck as it seems to be much-discussed.
Installation in Ubuntu 9.04 on my MacBook didn't seem to be going smoothly. However, here's a guide that worked for me. Note that you must have Adobe Air installed first.
Nice blackbird icon fits into my Kiba-Dock with ease.
I've only used it now for a few hours but found that @replies I had received from people I don't follow don't show up in my web twitter. Well, that's a surprise.
Some explanation fo this is provided in this blog post.
Anyway, I like that about TweetDeck but, honestly, other than that it really seems to me to be a bit too clunky.
So, unless with time its value becomes more apparent to me, I'll use it only to see @replies from people I'm not following.

Tried Opera Unite -- will be great when it works

Opera Unite became available today and, of course, I had to try it (in Ubuntu on all three computers).
First, it's not really a separate app but a part of the latest build of Opera 10 (4440 for Linux).
When the new build is installed and the panel button is pushed, a new option will be available which is Unite.
Actually, I have to say that I found the the new Opera build crashes with an annoying frequency, so you'll have to put up with this for the moment.
Unite provides options to share files, photos and messages as well as a shareable media player and a webs server.
I could share a photo with ease, although perhaps it was just a little slow, aand download it on the remote computer.
However, I had no luck even playing music on the remote despite claims that I can "Access your complete home music library from wherever you are". But this didn't work at all or even give any semblance that it was ever going to work. Nevertheless, the listing of all of my 48 GB of music did become visible on the remote. But couldn't open the folders to see what music was available nor search for a specific title.
Don't know what's the problem here but I'll check the forums tomorrow.
The fridge thing, which is really just instant messaging, works fairly well.
But it is in beta and I'll certainly be looking forward to this functioning more completely as development proceeds.
Not sure what'll be the situation about sharing music files/folders using this app as, AFAIK at present, you should be able to not just play, but actually download music on the remote. Now isn't this just the type of file sharing that's causing so much grief right now?
Let's see.

How to get the degree symbol (°) in Ubuntu

This is unlikely to be a mind-wrenching problem for many people but I'm annoyed at how difficult it is.
This thread post seemed offer some hope,
And, indeed it does work fine in, for example, Gedit. So, holding down Left Ctrl+Shift and tapping, in sequence, u b 0 gives rise to ° when all keys are released.
However, in Opera it seems to cause shortcut launches of many things and just does not at all produce the required, but curiously elusive, symbol.
The same happens in Gmail and even in writing this blog. To get the symbol printed here, I was forced to write it first in gedit and then copy and paste to the blog.
I'll keep searching.

[Edit: Some progress, but this is just a little complicated.
Just looking at two of my computers here; the Mac where,in Ubuntu, the keyboard layouts I use are USA Macintosh and Brazil. On the EeePC 901, in Ubuntu, I use USA and Brazil.
So, here's what I found after much trial and error.
To get ° or € on the Mac, I need (USAMac) Alt+8 and Alt+Shift+2. These work either in Opera or in Gedit.
With the Brazil layout on the Mac, to get ?, ° or €, I use Alt+w, Alt+Shift+0 and Alt+e.
On the EeePC 901, using USA layout, to get € I use AltGr+e. I was unable to find a combination for ° in the USA layout.
In the Brazil layout to get ?, ° and € I use AltGr+w, AltGr+Shift+0 and AltGr+e.
Interestingly, in this layout, while AltGr+Shift+0 gives ° in Opera, in Gedit the same combo gives an underlined degree symbol which I can't seem to reproduce here in this blog. Nevertheless, to get ° in Gedit, type AltGr+Shift+# (the key just above -to the right- of the Return key).]

Can't get rid of "artificial" wifi network

Yesterday, in my other blog, I described how I set up a very nice system to share a wired connection wirelessly when no wifi is available from the router.
This works fine. However, I just can't get rid of the artificial wifi network I set up on the Dell Desktop with the aid of a Belkin usb wireless receiver.
I've tried the following to stop it showing up in Network Manager:
1. Gconf Editor (Systems>>Networking>>Wireless>>Networks
However, only the network I was using showed up, not the phantom network that I'm trying to get rid of.
2. Right-click on nm applet and Edit Connections>>Wireless Tab and delete the unwanted network. If it doesn't show up here, just left-click on nm applet and click on the network. Now it should show up under the Wireless tab.
3. Plug out Belkin wireless receiver
4. Reboot

For some time after repeatedly trying each of these, the unwanted network still showed up when I left-clicked on the applet.
Then, all of a sudden, it disappeared. Something else I just don't understand.

FTP for home network.

This is really nice and it's particularly suitable for me as I have three computers on my desk, all of which can run Ubuntu Jaunty.
I got this from this guide and, as the guy says, it's really easy to set up.
Here's what I did:
On the MacBook:

1. sudo apt-get install vsftpd
2. sudo gedit /etc/vsftpd.conf
3. Modify this file as follows:
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
chroot_local_user=YES
anonymous_enable=NO
(uncomment the first three and change the last from YES to NO)
4. sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart
5. sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon avahi-discover avahi-utils libnss-mdns service-discovery-applet mdns-scan
6. sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

On the Dell and the EeePC 901 just do steps 1-4.
Now, make sure you know the internal IP of the two computers from which you want to share stuff on the Mac.
Then go to Places>>Connect to Server..
In the Server box, select FTP (with login).
Now in the new Server box, add the IP for the computer you want to connect to as well as the Username you use on that computer.
Next you'll be asked for the password for that account on the remote computer.
Now the /home folder will open on the computer you're using (Mac in my case).
I was able to open two remote /home folders and even move stuff from one remote /home to the other remote.
Very convenient if you work with multiple computers.
The original guide provides information of using sharing with OS X and with Windows but I haven't tried these myself.

Getting 1280x1024 in Jaunty with GeForce4 MX 420 card

Yesterday I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on my old Dell Desktop which has a GeForce4 MX 420 video card.
However, despite installing the 96.43.10 legacy driver, I couldn't get Ubuntu to boot into my preferred 1280x1024 resolution. Instead it seemed to be defaulting to 1024x768.
Nevertheless, by going to System >> Administration >> Display, I was able to use the nVidia dialog to get 1280x1026_60.
However, when I asked it to modify the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, it seemed to error-out saying that it couldn't create a backup of the xorg.conf file. Strange.
Nevertheless, it did provide a button to show what the changed xorg.conf would look like. So, I copied it and made a new xorg.conf manually (of course, making sure to keep a renamed version of the old xorg.conf as these experiments can easily lead to X not starting).
However, rebboting with this xorg.conf, although it did provide the required 1280x1024 on boot, it seemed to interfere with the 3D effects as AWN just produced a white band, Yakuake had no command prompt and a terminal was unwritable.
In any event, there seemed to be just one line in the suggested xorg.conf that was of relevance to the production of the required resolution. This was

Option "metamodes" "1280x1024_60 +0+0"

So, I added this to the screen section of the original xorg.conf and rebooted. Success!!, this worked fine.
Note, however, that in former versions of Ubuntu, the 1280x1024 was made available with the foolwoing line in xorg.conf:

Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768"

So, this seems now tto have been replaced by the "metamodes" line.
Just for completeness, I'm going to print all three versions of xorg.conf that feature in this post:
First, the original (or default) version that didn't allow Ubuntu to boot into 1280x1024

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
#Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

Now, here's what nVidia seemed to be suggesting but, for some reason, was not able to install it. In any event, it gave serious problems as I've already mentioned.

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "DELL E771a"
HorizSync 30.0 - 70.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 160.0
EndSection

Section "Device"

#Option "NoLogo" "True"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce4 MX 420"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Configured Video Device"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "0"
Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
Option "metamodes" "1280x1024_60 +0+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

And finally, here's the modified verion of the original xorg, that actually works fine.

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "metamodes" "1280x1024_60 +0+0"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
#Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

Send SMS with Skype in Linux

I've SMS messages through Skype before but only in Windows. I thought this facility wasn't available in Linux.
But, I was wrong!
This simple Howto explains everything.
Assuming you already have Skype installed, just do the following to install the SMS capability:
1. Download Skype4Py-1.0.29.0.tar.gz from here.
2. Extract and navigate to the produced folder in a terminal
3. Install with this command

sudo python setup.py install

4. Download skysentials-1.0.1.tar.gz from here.
5. Move to whatever folder you want and extract here.
Now to send an SMS, first make sure Skype is running and then just navigate to the folder created in Step 5. and use this command

sudo python skysentials.py

Use the dialog box that opens to send your SMS.
I tried one to Ireland (where I am right now) and this worked fine.
I sent another to Brazil but, although it was sent to the server, it's still pending delivery to the phone. It may well be a problem with the phone.