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This is a record of how I configured Ubuntu Linux 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) to run on my PC. This is purely for my own reference in case I need to reinstall it in the future, but it may be of use to other people who have similar hardware.

My hardware is as follows:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• Graphics: ATI Radeon 9550
• Wireless: Belkin 802.11g (Broadcom BCM4306 chipset)
• Sound: Realtek AC’97 (on motherboard)
• Video Capture: Conexant BtPCI
• Webcam: Logitech Quickcam
• Hard Drive: IDE
• Other: iPod Nano, USB Memory Stick
• Printer: Epson Stylus Photo 915
• Printer: Lexmark All-in-one X4550

The good news:

The basics were detected fine and worked straight away once I installed Ubuntu. My video card was detected, I got a decent screen resolution, and the sound worked. Also, my memory stick worked, and I could browse the files on my iPod. I could also see files on the NTFS partition of my hard drive, but they were read-only.

Wherever possible I am sticking to versions of apps and libraries in the Ubuntu Feisty Universe (using Synaptic).

The bad news:

• My wireless card didn’t work (luckily I had a wireless bridge I was able to borrow to plug into a wired port until I got it working).
• The 3D effects (Compiz/Beryl) did’t work – no 3d acceleration.
• Adobe flash player wouldn’t work because there is no 64 bit version

3D acceleration

To start with there was some acronyms to deal with. ATI offer a Linux driver on their web site, but it is not fully open source. It referred to as the fglrx driver. I didn’t have much luck with this driver – after installing it I still couldn’t get the 3D acceleration to work. There is an open source driver that seems to be referred to as the SGI driver, or just the “open source driver” – in the end this one worked for me.
There are lots of posts in forums that discuss ways of making it work, but it was this forum that had the answer that worked on my system: http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_feisty_beryl_ati_radeon

I do still get a problem when I first start up my PC. I have to manually restart Beryl and the Emerald theme manager by typing:
(beryl &) &
(emerald &) &

Flash Player

To get flash working in firefox, I had to use something called npwrapper to allow a 64bit firefox to run a 32bit plugin. The tutorial that I found worked was this one: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=341727 Make sure you follow the instructions carefully and don’t skip any steps.

Wireless Network

I struggled to get my Belkin wireless card working before giving up and buying a Netgear card instead The worked fine with the madwifi drivers that come with Ubuntu, but I did have a problem with the link dropping every so often. It appears to be a bug described here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/64173

Webcam

Haven’t had a chance to try this out yet.

Printing

My Epson printer was detected and showed up correctly as an Epson Stylus Photo 915, but when I tried to print the colours didn’t come out correctly. To fix it I installed the gutenprint driver – http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=gutenprint&fromprinter=Epson-Stylus_Photo_915

With the Lexmark printer I had more problems – it seems there is no Linux driver for the X4550. I spoke to the Lexmark technical support people and they apologised but confirmed it is not supported

Other Apps

Some other useful apps I installed:

• Java – I had some difficulties with the versions of Java available using Synaptic, so I downloaded the binary installer for Java 6 from the Sun website and that seems to work fine.
• IDE: Eclipse – The version of Eclipse available in Synaptic is 3.2 so not the latest, but seems to work ok.
• IDE: Netbeans – I had a problem running this that it transpires is a problem with all swing apps when using Beryl. The only way around it at present seems to be switching back to another window manager like metacity. I tried the latest daily builds of Java 6 and even Java 7 but they all seem to have the same problem. The only workaround (of sorts) I have found is the rather clever idea of running a nested X session within the current one. Details are available here: http://www.vikrammohan.com/blog/2006/12/31/how-to-make-java-swing-work-on-beryl-with-aiglx/
• Instant Messenger: Pidgin – A slightly newer version of Gaim. I got this one from their website, only Gaim is available in Synaptic. The sound didn’t work at first but I followed the instructions here to fix it: http://modfree.org/index.php?topic=458.msg5125 . Also, I wanted support for the sametime protocol, which meant that before compiling I had to install the libpurple-meanwhile and libpurple-meanwhile-dev packages.
• Password Safe – This is an app I used to use on Windows and find really useful. I found that it can be run in Wine – details here: http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=8739 . Wine is also not available in Synaptic as far as I can tell, so follow these instructions to add it: http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb
• Browser: Firefox – Installed by default
• Email: Thunderbird – Available in Synaptic
• Launcher: Katapult – Available in Synaptic
• Video Editing – I will do a separate post on this topic..
• Podcasts – Podnova client – available from http://www.podnova.com/subscriptions/download/
• Photo Management – Desktop Flickr Organiser. Great tool for viewing and editing your online Flickr photo collection. Available from http://code.google.com/p/dfo/
• Album Cover Art – A clever little script you can use to display your albums in the Nautilus file manager with their cover art: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=486359
• Cover Art Downloader – A handy tool for adding cover art to your music collection: http://www.unrealvoodoo.org/hiteck/projects/albumart/ . An extra step was required to make it work in Feisty: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2809331
• Screenlets – nifty little widgets to show clocks, CPU meters, calendars etc on the desktop: http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/08/24/osx-like-widgets-with-ubuntu-screenlets-and-compiz-fusion/

Themes

Once you have switched in the 3d effects in the appearances settings, you then have the option of two different kinds of window decorations (and therefore two different types of themes): GTK or Emerald. Switching between these and configuring them however is a bit of a pain. I came across this page which explains how to install some packages to make it all a lot easier: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/fedora-35/cant-get-berylemerald-theme-working-629177/

To get themes I found this site was the best: http://www.gnome-look.org

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 8:58 am and is filed under Ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.