In addition, the graphics card seemed to heat itself more easily with the noveau driver.

Sadly this lead me to realize that I would still have to use the proprietary NVIDIA driver to make use of my graphics card and the applications I use daily. Even worse, getting this installed would prove to harder than in earlier versions of Ubuntu. I don’t know if this is due to using Kubuntu or not, but if you should experience some of the same symptoms, here is how I fixed it.

First of all, the symptoms were as follows after installing the nvidia-current package:

• The computer started only with one display and with a very low resolution (640 x 480)
• Enabling the nvidia driver using jockey-kde or jockey-text resulted in errors such as
• ERROR: XorgDriverHandler.enable(): package or module not installed, aborting
• WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current_updates
• Finally, installing nvidia-current only gave the error:
• Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
  kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.

So, if you experience any of these, the reason is most likely missing kernel source and header libraries. The fix is thankfully simple, just run the following commands in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current
sudo apt-get install linux-source
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic
sudo apt-get install linux-image
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
jockey-text -e xorg:nvidia_current

After this, if you get no errors, try to reboot and run

nvidia-settings

after booting. Now you should be able to set up and use your system with full graphics acceleration.

Good luck!

I’ll assume that you have a Linux system set up with sudo and mysql already installed. Fire up a terminal and type

sudo su

Open up ~/.my.cnf in your favorite editor (the ~ points to the root account now).

vim ~/.my.cnf

and add the following contents:

[client]
user = root
password = yourpassword

Follow up with logging out of root:

exit

And run sudo to start MySQL. Remember to use the -H option to point all requests for ~ to root’s home directory:

sudo -H mysql

It is a simple as that

—-

This is strange, since it worked fine on a laptop i tried to install Lighting on just a few days ago. But in any case, it works now, so if you want Thunderbird with Lightning on Ubuntu and are having trouble installing it, you might want to try this command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install thunderbird xul-ext-lightning libstdc++5

That should do the trick.

to nameofbookmark

To install apparix in Ubuntu, type

sudo apt-get install apparix

in a terminal window.

After installation you need to set up the aliases “bm” for bookmarking and “to” for going to a bookmark by adding a few functions to your .bashrc file in your home folder (if you don’t have this file, you can create it yourself).

You’ll find the functions you need to add by issuing the command

apparix --shell-examples

in a terminal window. Copy everything below “Bash-style functions” except the “CSH-style aliases”. Paste this into your .bashrc file.

Open up a new terminal, cd to your directory of choice and type

bm mybookmark

to bookmark the folder. Afterwards you can go to any folder and type

to mybookmark

to go to your bookmark.

This tool is of course available for other Linux distributions too.

This has shown to be quite simple to fix if you can live with a script doing the job for you. First, type the following in a terminal and note the output:

xinput --list

You will see a bunch of names for you peripheral devices. You should look for anything that has to do with “Wacom”. For instance, on my machine, I see these names:

⎡ Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom Graphire4 4x5 eraser              	id=12	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom Graphire4 4x5 cursor              	id=13	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom Graphire4 4x5 pad                 	id=14	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom Graphire4 4x5 stylus              	id=15	[slave  pointer  (2)]

Now, create a file somewhere on your computer. I’ve put mine in a subdir of my home directory, naming it “wacom-settings.sh”. Add these contents to the file and change the name of each “Wacom…” to whatever you received as output above:

#!/bin/sh
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 stylus" Twinview Horizontal
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 stylus" Screen_No 0x001
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 cursor" Twinview Horizontal
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 cursor" Screen_No 0x001
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 pad" Twinview Horizontal
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 pad" Screen_No 0x001
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 eraser" Twinview Horizontal
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Graphire4 4x5 eraser" Screen_No 0x001

Then you’ll just have to make the file executable. This could be done from terminal by issuing the command

chmod +x wacom-settings.sh

in the same directory as the file.

You could also right-click the file, select Properties > Permissions tab and check “Allow executing this file as a program”.

You might either add this file to your startup applications under System > Preferences > Startup Applications (this will only work if your tablet is connected when logging in) or you could add a launcher on either your desktop or in one of your panels by dragging the file there.

This should be it. To test that the configuration really works, double click the file and click “Run in Terminal”. If the tablet appears on the wrong screen, change the Screen_No above from  0×001 to 0×000.

Good luck with your notes and drawings!

Although they call it a preview, it seems to be a very finished and good-looking product, and I finally might get rid of those annoying sudden playback stops I experienced while Spotify under Wine. At least I haven’t experienced any of them yet.

I wish they would release it as an open source application as well, but for now, I’m very satisfied seeing that the money I’m spending on it pays off for Linux users as well. At the moment though, it seems like it is only packaged for Ubuntu and Debian, but hackers using other distros out there are probably going to figure out how to run it on other machines.

Now I’ll be hoping for a native version for N900, as most of the projects attempting to run Spotify on Maemo appear to be left unusable each time Spotify updates their API.

If you are using Thunderbird for e-mail and want to send mathematical formulas to your contacts, you should consider the LaTeX It! plugin or the Equations plugin. The former requires you to have LaTeX and ImageMagick installed, while Equations uses an external server to generate your images.

There are a few pros and cons to both approaches. If you are using the Equations plugin, your images won’t be integrated in your e-mail as files, but will simply be linked to. You will see the images, of course, but if the server should crash or no longer be operative, your LaTeX formulas will become invisible.

This will probably not happen in the nearest future, but if you want to see your formulas forever, it might be a good idea to use LaTeX It! instead.

The problem with LaTeX It! is that it requires your computer to have the right set of packages installed. In Ubuntu this is no problem – you just install the packages texlive-latex-base, texlive-binaries and imagemagick using either Synaptic or by issuing the following command in a Terminal:

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base texlive-binaries imagemagick

In Windows you need to install LaTeX and ImageMagick by using the automatic installers, and you will also need GhostScript. On a Mac, however, I’ve not yet got the installation to work. You could try to see if everything is installable from MacPorts, but I have been unlucky with the converting, and would suggest you use the Equations plugin if everything else fails.

Welcome to the world of connecting an Ubuntu computer to a Windows Server. The later years this has become quite easy, but this summer the University of Oslo has upgraded its servers. And with a new version of Windows, there is bound to be new problems on the way.

Update: After another search I found the following workaround. Just run the two following commands in a terminal:

sudo chown root:root ~/.rdesktop
sudo chmod 500 ~/.rdesktop

Now you may connect again without problems. If you want to see the alternative workaround, keep reading.

Connecting to a Windows machine running Remote Desktop is easy in Ubuntu if you use the Terminal Server Client. You just type in whatever you need in this window, and you’re set to connect:

Notice that “hmm…” in there? Well, that’s what it is. It’s a hmm…

Quite frankly I haven’t investigated what this Client Hostname is supposed to do, but it turned out to be the solution for today’s problem. And the problem is that whenever I try to connect to a University terminal server I receive the following error:

After a quick search on the Internet, the “Internal licensing error” turned out to be a common beast, but with no obvious solution for me. I realized quickly that I was not in a position to do administrative modifications on one of UiO’s terminal servers, so no luck with those suggestions. Instead I gave the good old trial-and-error approach a try.

Typing in different settings for domain, protocol, display, local resources, keyboard and so forth I came to change the Client Hostname of my Terminal Server Client.

Success!

I connected to the terminal server without any hick-ups.

Once.

Whenever I reconnect now I get the same error as above. However, if I change the Client Hostname to something new, I get back in.

ifconfig usb0 192.168.2.14 up

If you, like me, get tired of doing this you may instead let Network Manager in Gnome do the work for you. First of all, connect your N900 via an available USB port. Next, right click the Network Manager icon and hit “Edit Connections…”.

This window will pop up. Press the “Add” button.

Type in a useful name, such as “N900 via usb”, and leave everything under “Wired” as is. Select the “IPv4 Settings” tab.

Set the Method to “Manual” and click “Add”.

Type in 192.168.2.14 as the address and 255.255.255.0 as the netmask. Leave the gateway blank.

Hit “Apply” and you are good to go!

Next, just click the Network Manager icon and select “N900 via usb”. If nothing went wrong, you should now be connected to your device, enabling you to use Qt Creator to its full extent. The next time you plug in your N900, Network Manager will do the work for you automatically.

Update: Note that if you already have a wired connection, Network Manager might try to connect to this so-called “Auto Ethernet” connection when you plug in. If this happens, just click the network manager icon and select the correct connection.

This might also happen the other way around, connecting to your USB connection with your Ethernet card, which of course won’t work. To avoid this completely, you might want to disable auto-connection for you N900 USB.