However, it all came to naught — VMWare fail. Miserably. Why? Because I can’t download the thing.

VirtualBox provides nice direct download links, and — even better — an Ubuntu repository.

What about WMWare? They provide… this:

VMWare... What the hell?

Problem solved — there’s no way I want to hand over this kind of data. Sure, I could just fill in nonsense data (and I started to)… but then what happens when I need an update, or even upgrade to a paid version? VMWare: What the hell are you thinking, asking for all this personal information? The bounce rate for your software must be hideous — what a great way to send people to your competitors.

If you’re here because you’re searching for a “direct link to VMWare Player” in Google: Sorry, try this, much better link, instead.

On Ubuntu, I’ve stuck with gedit, with several plugins, including the Symbol Browser from Micah Carrick. I tried, at various times, jEdit, gPhpEdit, and even Eclipse — but they all just ‘got in my way’ too much. gPhpEdit came close, but I found the function list wasn’t always accurate.

However, three things prompted me to look elsewhere again: First, it was choking on some sql dumps I was editing; Second, the symbol browser stopped working in Karmic; and Third, I still hate the shortcuts. I still prefer ctrl-Y for “redo” rather than “ctrl-shift-Z”, and I really, really need a shortcut (ctrl-D) for “duplicate this line”.

So, I just came across Geany — it’s great. It’s fast, configurable, stable, has a great symbol browser, has the shortcuts just right, and doesn’t get in my way.

It seems that Geany’s been around for a while — and is even part of the standard image on some lightweight linux distros. But this is the first time I’ve come across it — and I’m glad I did.

Squeezeplay is the Squeezebox controller / squeezebox touch user interface, and it can run on any computer. You can use that computer as a controller for your squeezebox receiver, or as a complete squeezebox, playing music. If you can get it running on a portable device, you effectively get a new Squeezebox Controller for free.

Unfortunately, even though the Squeezeboxes are based on a GNU/Linux foundation, Linux users don’t get much love when it comes to releases of SqueezePlay… so we have to compile it ourselves.

Here is how to get SqueezePlay working on Ubuntu karmic amd64, but the instructions should apply to other distros. I’ve also tested it on Karmic 32 bit.

In order to run SqueezePlay, we need to compile the latest development code for SqueezePlay 7.5 that Logitech have available online on their SVN server. This guide is correct as at 21 Nov 2009, but as the Logitech devs work on the code, things will change, and they might introduce new bugs. For now, this is the procedure — and it works nicely with my SqueezeCentre 7.4.1.

First of all, we need to install the required dependencies. This may not be a complete list, as I may have had things installed already — if you get errors with ld towards the end of the process, you may be missing some.

Install the below packages with the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install build-essential flex bison subversion automake libtool libpng12-dev libjpeg62-dev libexpat1-dev libreadline5-dev xorg-dev libflac++-dev libvorbis-dev libvorbisidec-dev libasound-dev

Next, we need to grab the SVN source code. Create a directory somewhere, open a terminal, and cd into the directory. Then do:
svn co http://svn.slimdevices.com/repos/jive/7.5/trunk/squeezeplay

Wait while the source is downloaded.

Now, we need to fix a couple of bugs to ensure it compiles smoothly. I’ve reported these to the dev team, so if you can’t find the parts to change — or it looks like they are fixed already, then don’t worry

The first two bugs are in <your-folder>/squeezeplay/src/Makefile.linux, so open up the file in a text editor, and make the following changes:

• On line 10, change ${PWD} to $(shell pwd) . After the change, line 10 will look thus:
  SRC_DIR = $(realpath $(shell pwd)) .
• Change line 146 as from: cd luaprofiler-2.0 && make -f Makefile.linux install to: cd luaprofiler-2.0 && LD="gcc -shared" make -f Makefile.linux install

The third bug: browse to <your-folder>/squeezeplay/src/squeezeplay/src/audio/decode, and open decode.c. Find the printf statement on line 434, and change %llu to %"PRIu64". After this, line 434 will look like this:
printf("elapsed:%"PRIu64" buffers: %0.1f%%/%0.1f%%\n", elapsed, dbuf, obuf);

Finally, we need to replace one of the static libraries that squeezeplay is using — the version of portaudio that is included is out of data, and prevents sound from playing. So, download the latest portaudio here, put it in your squeezeplay/src directory, and double-click it to extract it there. Then rename Logitech’s portaudio_v19_1360 directory to portaudio_v19_1360--old, and rename your new portaudio directoy to portaudio_v19_1360.

Now, it’s time to compile the code. Switch to the <your-folder>squeezeplay/src directory in your terminal (e.g. cd squeezeplay/src), and run the compile as follows:

sudo make -f Makefile.linux

This will take a while. Once done, you will have a tarball in the ../build directory. To install squeezeplay, you just need to extract the contents of this to /opt/squeezeplay:


cd ../build/
sudo mkdir /opt/squeezeplay
tar -C /opt/squeezeplay -xvf sq<TAB>


(the exact name of the squeezeplay tarball will vary — just hit tab to have it auto-complete).

then, to start squeezeplay, the command is:
/opt/squeezeplay/bin/squeezeplay.sh

to uninstall, just delete it from /opt.

Some potential hiccups:

• Makefile.linux has a “-deb” option that is supposed to build a .deb package for installation. However, it doesn’t seem to work. Furthermore, if you try it, you’ll need to clear out your working folder and start again — even with ‘make clean’, you’ll never be able to build a package until you start over, for some reason.

Squeezeplay on Ubuntu

My next step is to get it running on an old iPaq PDA I have lying around… watch this space!

Like most people, at first, I thought this was a bug. The short answer is — it isn’t. The devs, in their infinite wisdom, think its better this way — the “top slot” for notifications is reserved for synchronous notifications, such as brightness and volume.

Karmic notification position

Again, like most people, I completely disagree with the change — I think notifications hovering in the upper third of my screen are annoying, get in my way, and look sloppy. If they are worried about synchronous notifications moving around, they should centre them on the screen, like on a Mac — not move everything else around.

Anyway, Julien Lavergne has cooked up a quick patch for notify-osd that reverts back to the old behaviour. What’s more, he’s compiled notify-osd with the patch incorporated, so we can automatically use it.

To make use of his patch, and have it automatically kept up-to-date, you’ll need to add a new software source. You can do that with this one-liner in a terminal: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gilir/updates

Then do an update through Update Manager, or through sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.

And — there you go:

That's much better

A karmic Koala in a seashell

If you do a fresh install of Karmic, everything will work just fine out of the box on the 1005HA. However, a fresh install is complete overkill. As always with Ubuntu — and with most Linux distributions in general — upgrading is easy. Few clicks in the package manager, and away you go.

However, if you followed my guide to installing Jaunty, you’ll have a few old packages kicking around that will cause a few idiosyncrasies. Immediately after the upgrade, I found that wireless was less reliable, particularly after suspend/resume. Also, I found that suspend was not reliable.

The solution is easy: you need to remove some of the things you installed.

You can remove these using Synaptic, or by doing apt-get remove <packagename1> <packagename2> <packagename3> .....

Remove the following:

• Any backports you have installed, in particular linux-backports-modules-jaunty, but that is just a metapackage — check that no linux-backports* are installed. You won’t need any of the new karmic backports either.
• eeepc-tray and eeepc-laptop-dkms or netbook-dkms.

After doing this, restart and make sure all your packages are up to date (use update manager or do sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.

Then, as the last step, you need to remove all the unneeded packages that were pulled in as dependencies previously. Easy — in a terminal, just type sudo apt-get autoremove. It’ll ask you to confirm, and you should see packages such as dkms being removed.

Finally, restart, and you should be all set

Getting something from inside one folder is easy — you just set the queryOptions parameter to be <QueryOptions><Folder>folderName</Folder></QueryOptions>.

This works and returns items fron within that folder. But what about subfolders?

One would expect it to be simple — but it is not, replacing folderName with folderName\subFolder does not work — it still returns items from within folderName.

The solution is simple but non-obvious. For sub-folders, you have to include the name of the list as the first path element — so the query becomes <QueryOptions><Folder>listName\folderName\subFolder</Folder></QueryOptions>

This doesn’t seem to be covered in any documentation, and is non-obvious, inconsistent behaviour. It resulted in a lot of wasted time for me. Unsurprising really for the over-complex, proprietary, non-standard mess that is SharePoint.

However, if you try out the Accessibility options, in particular, the “improve contrast” option, it goes ugly, with a nasty grey bar.

The problem is that, even after you deselect the option, the theme does not revert back, even after restarting again. The problem is that some needed theme files are deleted.

The solution is simple — you need to re-install gdm. Either fire up Synaptic, search for gdm, and then mark it for re-installation, or do sudo aptitude reinstall gdm in a terminal.

There you go — sexy login screen back again.

As the 1005HA is pretty new, it has a few odd hardware quirks that won’t be fully supported out of the box until the next release of Ubuntu.

Here I run through what I did to end up with a 100% working install — including all Fn hotkeys. The good news is that it is very easy!

My perfect Ubuntu setup on the 1005HA

If you followed these instructions before, and now want to upgrade to Karmic, see my notes here.

Step 1: Installing Ubuntu

Start off with Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It is designed for netbooks and comes with a customised kernel. Even if you don’t like the special netbook interface, it can be easily reverted to the default Ubuntu look with a single click.

Download it here, and follow the simple instructions here to create an installer on a USB stick.

Power on your netbook, and repeatedly tap F2 to bring up the BIOS configuration.

Under “Boot settings”, disable “Boot Booster”, and hit F10 to save settings. We do this so that we can specify our USB installer as the boot device, and can re-enable it later.

When the machine reboots, hit “Esc” repeatedly to being up the boot menu. Choose the USB key, and away you go.

I wouldn’t bother with the “live preview”, and jump straight into the install.

The Ubuntu install process is straightforward.

Partitioning during install

Partition the disk however you like.

I created separate partitions for / (20gb), /boot (1gb), swap (4gb), bootbooster efi partition (16MB), and /home (the remainder), but how you do it is really up to you. I favour the above partitioning scheme to serve me really well over the years.

I set /home, /boot and / to format as ext4, and found performance to be great.

Don’t forget to create a swap partition of around 2x the amount of RAM if you want hibernation to work!

The EFI partition is for the Asus Boot Booster feature. It needs to be 8MB — I made it 16 just to be sure. At boot time, BIOS information is cached in this little partition so that the power-on self test can be bypassed. It speeds up the boot process by several seconds, which I think is great.

You can leave the EFI that comes pre-created. However, I wanted to blow away all partitions and start from scratch with my own partitioning scheme, so I recreated it. It must be a primary partition. It must be labelled as type “EFI”, which I was not able to do using the installer. See below for instructions on how to set it after the install is completed. Leave this partition unformatted.

Wired networking

After install, the first thing you’ll notice is that ethernet and wireless networking aren’t working. Fortunately, they’re easy to fix.

On a computer with working networking, download this file:

atheros-wired-driver-1005ha-linux

Open the zip file (double-click it), and extract it to the location of your choice. Then, in a terminal, navigate (’cd’) to the ’src’ directory of the unpacked files, and type:

make
sudo make install
sudo insmod atl1e.ko


If you receive an error after the first line, and you’re not running Ubuntu Jaunty UNR, ensure you have the linux headers package installed for your kernel — you’ll need to find and download the appropriate .deb and install it. Information is here.

Until Ubuntu Karmic is released, every time you do a kernel update, you will need to re-run the last two steps (preceded by a sudo rmmod atl1e.ko).

You now have ethernet network — so plug yourself in to a network cable and set up wireless…

Wireless networking

This is easy — you just need to install the driver back-ported from the next Ubuntu release.

First, enable the backports repository: Administration > Software Sources > Updates and enable “Unsupported Updates (jaunty-backports)”.

Then, open Synaptic Package Manager, find the package linux-backports-modules-jaunty, and install it.

Getting rid of the Netbook Remix interface

While the netbook remix interface is innovative, I prefer having a desktop and a normal panel with window switcher. To kill the netbook interface, Just go to Preferences > Switch Desktop Mode.

Gnome panels can take up too much space on a netbook screen — you can set them to auto-hide by right-clicking them and choosing Properties. To speed up the auto-hide behaviour, fire up gconf-editor, and navigate to apps > panel > toplevels, and reduce hide_delay and unhde_delay for each panel.

Super Hybrid Engine, Installing an eeePC tray utility, and getting all hotkeys to work

An eeePC tray utility is useful in order to utilise Asus’ so-called “Super Hybrid Engine”, which is really just marketing lingo for adjusting processor speed for different power:performance profiles. It also enables you to switch on/off all the eeePC’s integrated peripherals with a click or two, or using the hotkeys.

After a bit of trial and error, I found that the best tool for the job is “eeepc-tray”. It can be installed from a repository, which means that it will be automatically kept up to date.

Follow these simple instructions to add the statux.org repository.

When done, fire up Synaptic Package Manager, and find and install the packages eeepc-tray and eeepc-laptop-dkms. When done, reboot.

Now, all your hotkeys, apart from Fn+Space, Fn+F3, and the top-left touchpad enable/disable buttons,will be working.

Finishing off: Final hotkeys

First off, we need to make the touchpad addressable by other applications. The safest way to do that is through a rather cumbersome SHMConfig policy XML file.

Create a new plain text file, with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.product" string="SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad">
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
</match>
</device>
<device>
<match key="info.linux.driver" string="psmouse">
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

and save it as /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi.

Then reboot, or restart X (right-alt - SysRq - k), and the touhpad will now be addressable. When you type, it will briefly disable to prevent accidental mousing.

All we need to do now is enable the outstanding hotkeys. Right-click the eeepc-tray icon, click “Edit Configuration”, and paste the following in the empty file:

#Touchpad control
KEY_TOUCHPAD="00000037"
# Fn + space
KEY_FSB="00000039"


And there you go… all working!

Sound and microphone

The sound works perfectly out of the box. However, the microphone input is set to the microphone jack, rather than the internal mic by default. To change it, open Volume Control, hit Preferences, and enable all the Mic and Input Source options. Then, set the input source to “Int Mic” under the Options tab.

In skype, set your Sound In device to be HDA Intel (hw:Intel, 0). (Sound Out and Ringing should be set to ‘pulse’)

Setting the EFI partition for boot booster

As mentioned above in the partitioning section, for boot booster to work if you removed the default Asus EFI partition during install, you’ll need to set your new 8MB primary partition as type “EFI”. Doing that is simple:

open a terminal, and type sudo fdisk -l to list your partitions. Look for the little Boot Booster partition you set aside. My EFI partition was on device /dev/sda3.

Then, to set the appropriate partition as “EFI”, type sudo sfdisk --change-id /dev/sda 3 ef, replacing “3″ with the device name you found in the previous step (e.g. “2″ for /dev/sda2).

Just be sure you do it to the right partition — back up your data first if you’re unsure!

When you reboot, hit F2, and re-enable boot booster in the BIOS.

Annoying!

A desktop icon is fine for an SD card, or a USB stick, but it’s not ideal when you have a ton of network shares.

It is easy to turn off all desktop icons for mounts using gconf-editor. But I still want some of them (such as the aforementioned USB sticks) to show — just not the NFS mounts.

As it turns out, the solution is actually obvious: semi-permanent items should be mounted in the right place, under /mnt. If you mount elsewhere, e.g. under /home, you get the annoying icon. Under /mnt? No icon.

Although this turned out to be quite obvious, it is new to me — for well over a year now I’ve just had all desktop mount icons turned off waiting for the solution.