I am working on a build of Intrepid for the webbook, what would you like on it? I was going to do a default install from the CD then add Tuxpaint, Gnucash, Planner, Inkscape, the Wader mobile broadband client. I was also going to remove mono, which takes out Fspot which doesn’t work that well at 1024×600. Is there anything you would add? Anything you would remove?
I just discovered how to change Evolution to Thunderbird in the Gnome panel for new users (it is easy to do as a user, but not so obvious as an OEM) Changing evolution.desktop to thunderbird.desktop in /etc/gconf/schemas/panel-default-setup.entries seems to do the trick (plus installing thunderbird obviously). So do you want Thunderbird as the default mail client?
then again, that doesn’t work, the correct file is /var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults/%gconf-tree.xml and that overrides the one in /etc.
Yes I would like to have Thunderbird as the default email client. Unfortunately it does not work with Yahoo mail but it does work with Gmail and Fastmail, both of which I use.
I prefer Thunderbird too, I spent quite a long time trying to change the icon in the top panel but couldn’t make the settings stick. We had to choose between shipping with a broken icon in the panel, shipping with two email clients (and confused users) or shipping with Evolution and the ridiculously large account setup wizard.
I’m happy with Evolution; I’ve been using it for a couple of years. But it’s not a problem to install it, if it doesn’t come as standard. (Really just letting you know that it’s not totally unloved. lol) I wouldn’t be without Klipper, it is so very useful, but that’s a KDE package and I don’t think Glipper does everything that Klipper does (or it didn’t last time I tried it).
Just some decent graphics drivers shipping as standard!
Also, the sound seems to be very quiet on Intrepid, any ideas? All the volume sliders are at max
It is quiet, yes. Even with vlc at 200% I still think it’s quiet. Was listening to my mate’s radio stream the other night and did begin to wonder…
As far as email goes – Thunderbird all the way please, Alan! I’m just used to it, and it seems to be covered by most computing magazines these days…
Otherwise, add Sunbird, erm, add the usual web stuff (like flash, java, etc) please.
Personally, I’d also like to see LAMPP installed, but I can’t see that being needed for many other users! Lol.
Regards,
Matt Dinnery,
Webmaster,
Medical Admissions – Getting you in…
http://www.medicaladmissions.co.uk
One thing that’s really bugging the hell out of me:
Alan,
Can you let us “regulars” register and login to this blog at subscriber level please? I’m after an easy-ish way to keep track of what posts I’ve commented on, and if there are any new comments under them!
PS – I do hope you’re using WP 2.7b1, because the admin gui looks cool…
Regards,
Matt Dinnery,
Webmaster,
Medical Admissions – Getting you in…
http://www.medicaladmissions.co.uk
I can install Java, but I can’t pre-install Adobe Flash (nasty non-free software). I could install gnash, but that doesn’t work everywhere and once you have gnash it is a bit harder to install flash. I will turn on subscriptions and upgrade my wordpress. Currently using 2.6.1 but downloading 2.7b1 now.
@Philip, I went into the volume control and turn Master, PCM and Front to the maximum and it is now about as loud as it ever has been for me. The newer OpenChrome drivers are somewhat better than they were, but Compiz isn’t going to work.
I am adding X11VNC to the list. I would like to add ssh server but I just realised it generates the SSH keys on install so it would be a particularly bad idea to install that and then clone the image.
Hi There
I’ve upgraded my webbook to intrepid, very easily, virtually without the use of the command line. Please note, don’t attempt this if you only have a few minutes to spare !!!
1: Initially make sure your webook is fully updated.
2: Start the Software Sources app, in the system/administration menu.
2.1 Select the Updates tab,
2.2 Towards the bottom, you will now find a ‘Release Upgrade’ section, from the drop down list, select Normal Releases
2.3 Click ‘Close’
3: Start ‘Update Manager’
3.1 If the section 2 was carried out successfully, you now have the option to upgrade to 8.10
3.2 Click ‘Upgrade’
3.3 Read the release notes, if you want to
3.4 Click ‘Upgrade’
3.5 Watch the progress of the upgrade.
3.6 As part of ‘Preparing to upgrade’, you will be presented with ‘Third party sources disabled’ message box, simply click on ‘Close’ and the upgrade will continue.
3.7 Once the upgrade preparation has completed, you will be given the option to really ‘Start the upgrade’ Click on ‘Start Upgrade’ – You now have a very long wait !!
3.8 During the installation process you will be prompted to accept overwriting of certain configuration files, I would say generally these can be accepted.
3.9 At the end of ‘Cleaning Up’ you will prompted to remove obsolete packages, simply click ‘Remove’ unless you have something specific.
3.10 Once all the obsolete packages have been removed, you will be prompted to ‘restart the system’ click on ‘Restart Now’
Post Upgrade
Now we just need to tidy a few things up.
1. Get wireless led working once again. I won’t re-write everything, just follow this :
http://webbookblog.com/?p=41
2. Restart the webook Now you can use Fn+F1 and see the wireless network LED working merrily.
3. Tidy up ‘Software Sources’
3.1 Start the Software Sources app, in the system/administration menu.
3.2 Click on the ‘Third Party Software’ tab
3.4 Remove the Cdrom 8.04 sources by selecting each, and clicking on ‘Remove’
3.5 For each of the other sources, select and click on ‘Edit’ and change any instance of ‘hardy’ to ‘intrepid’ in the Distribution text box.
3.5.1 NOTE: Do not do this for the ‘wader’ and ‘wellington’ sources, leave them as hardy-*
3.6 Select each of the sources that you wish to enable, by clickin in the relevant tick box
3.7 Click ‘Close’
3.8 click ‘Reload’
4 Apply any additional updates using update manager.
5 Remove addition obsolete packages. I removed the wader packages, as ‘network manager’ handles my 3G modem very well, in fact probably better than wader !!. To do this start the ‘Synaptic package manager’ from the ‘System/Administration’ menu
5.1 Type ‘wader’ in the ‘Quick Search’
5.2 Click on the Green square against ‘wader-core’
5.3 Select ‘Mark for Complete Removal’
5.4 Click ‘Apply’
5.5 Delete the ‘Mobile Broadband’ icon from the desktop.
Try you 3G modem
In my case:
1. Plug in 3G modem. After a few seconds, a popup box saying new hardware found, with thoption to ‘Configure’
2. Click ‘Configure’
3. Another popup box will appear, ‘Mobile Connect’ stating that the medium contains software that’s intended to run automatically, click ‘Cancel’
4. New Mobile Broadband Connection screen.
4.1 ‘Welcome’ click ‘Forward’
4.2 ‘Service Provider’ – in my case 3 clikc ‘Forward’
4.3 ‘Summary’ Click ‘Apply’
5 Activate connection. click the Network Icon (2 what look like PC monitors)
5.1 Select your newly created broadband connection
5.2 wait a few seconds, and then bingo, you should have confirmation of a connection, and should now have access to the internet via your 3G modem.
I should poin out that there is no harm in continuing to use wader.
Anyhow, I hope some have found this useful, If I’ve missed anything, then I apologise.
Cheers
Tony
Hi Tony, thanks very much for that!
I am just debating with myself whether to put in the webbook desktop background or stick with the Intrepid default background. What do you think?
for reference this is the Intrepid background
Hi
I’ve not altered the desktop settings really, as I quite like the webbook desktop
Cheers
wow, 2.7 b1 is quite different. Very nice. I have enabled registration, just need to put back some of the meta links somewhere. You should be able to register now if you go to the correct URL
seems I need to do something else in the theme to take advantage of threaded comments though.
Threaded comments appear to be working I think
I think that did it.
if ur adding programs to the install, these would be nice;
Yakuake – awesome terminal program, that drops down allowing you to use more of ur screen
Ubuntu Tweak – making the os even better
and if u have some spare time then;
Wine with one of its loaders – always good to have
Gmount-iso – also nice to have…
Virtualbox – it has its moments!
Yakuake is a KDE application which is fine, but brings in a lot of dependencies and means I can’t fit the image in 1GB which means more expensive USB sticks. I might do a Kubuntu build at some stage. I like kbasket myself. Ubuntu tweak isn’t in the repositories and I want to stick to the repos as much as possible. We did install WINE on the webbooks, I ended up regretting it more than I liked it as people tried to run the programs included on the pseudo CDRom on the broadband dongles (not helped by the network support teams instructing people to do so)
Gmount-ISO – wow, that is handy! I will add that one.
Virtualbox – we had problems with this from time to time as the modules were out of sync with the kernel, I think that is fixed now, I will check.
just added gimp-plugin-registry because it includes liquid rescaling
then again again, that doesn’t work because debian.defaults gets trashed by update-gconf-defaults which gets called by the oem-config script. The correct file to edit is /usr/share/gconf/defaults/05_panel-default-setup-entries That one does in fact work.
Tony – I am pleased that the upgrade worked so well for you – I had a disastrous day yesterday, when my attempt to upgrade did not go at all according to plan. As a result, my Webbook is totally out of action. The good news is that Elonex are sending me a bootable usb drive with Linux loaded on it so that I can rebuild my Webbook.
Incidentally, Elonex also offered a Windows XP drive for £49 as an alternative, but I am happy to persevere with Linux – after all, I was really impressed with the Webbook running Linux until yesterday, so I’ll give it another go.
OK, I now have a decent Ibex image on a 1GB usb key. I can get that to the support guys but I want to do a download version as well. I am contemplating the best way I can host a 1GB download. I think it might be time to learn how to set up a bittorrent tracker.
Alan – well done! On a technical point, how do you make a usb drive bootable? I have copied Ubuntu 8.4 on to a portable hard drive, but the Webbook would not reboot from it. What else should I have done?
you need a bootloader, syslinux to be precise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYSLINUX we use GRUB for the normal boot from hard drive but syslinux works for USB drives.
Oh I see – this was missing from the portable hard drive so it wouldn’t reboot. It looks a bit too complex for a beginner to tackle.
@Alan,
No, you ain’t enabled registrations.I’ve used the direct link of /wp-register.php and it says its disabled. The option you’re looking for is “Anyone can register” (look for the heading “Membership”) and it’s under Settings -> General in 2.7b1. Also good to check user default role is subscriber while you’re there.
Are you on 2.7b1 or not? I can’t tell. (Register for http://www.medicaladmissions.co.uk/blog/ if you want to have a look at the UI or ‘play’)
Threaded comments are working, yes, but methinks your CSS can’t handle them. I don’t know if your theme can support them – but if not, it should just be a simple addition of a style class with “bullet-style: none ;” in there!
And while your on the theme editor, find the missing php tags that’s causing “if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( ‘comment-reply’ ); ” to be put at the top of your blog.
Don’t worry – I did exactly the same at 3am on Sunday morning when I was messing around, on my live server! Had to do a clean install of 2.6.3 and then put my theme back, and then re-upgrade to 2.7b1…
PS – If you want, once I’ve registed, promote me up to Admin and I’ll have a look at your theme for you?
Regards,
Matt Dinnery,
Webmaster,
Medical Admissions – Getting you in…
http://www.medicaladmissions.co.uk
@Sue,
Try it, go on – you know you want to!
I’m a complete beginner where most of linux is concerned, too…
Yet I’d say most people on here would consider us to be quite experienced users of webbooks exchanging our geeky views as we sit behind black/green terminal screens in darkened rooms! Lol. (old linux stereotype for those that don’t get it)
We’re nowhere near as good as Alan, but I’d say we’re learning very quickly thanks to him, and getting the hang of things slowly but surely!
Regards,
Matt Dinnery,
Webmaster,
Medical Admissions – Getting you in…
http://www.medicaladmissions.co.uk
I found the Anyone Can Register checkbox, the bit I was missing was the “Save Changes” button
Try now, and yes I will promote you.
I did change the CSS (not sure it is quite how I like it though) try a shift-reload as you might have the css cached. I am not sure quite how to fix that for everyone who has it cached. Maybe change the filename of the CSS file? Seems a bit clunky, there must be a better way to do it.
@Alan,
I’m registered as ‘Matt’ so feel free to go on and promote me.
I did reload using Ctrl+F5, but it hasn’t changed (I’ve also stopped Firefox caching things anyway).
I’ve got a fair idea of what I’m doing to remove the top bit – it’s a missing php tag on one of the pages – just need to find it. As for bullets, I’d need to study the html output and css, but shouldn’t be too hard!
I’m back at college now, but I’m on lunch 1200-1300, so might have a look then!
Matt.
Matt – yes you are right, I would love to have a go at this if only I knew where to start! I had a look around on the internet last night and I got an idea of what to do, but then ran out of time. In a way I have nothing to lose – my Webbook is not working, but Elonex are sending a memory stick that I can use if I can’t make my own bootable usb drive. Alan is on the case too, so one way or another I should have a working Webbook soon.
How about including openoffice 3 instead of the openoffice 2.4 default in Ibex?
Hi Sue
Sorry to hear that you had problems, did you try your attempt before, or after I’d put my notes up?
I’ve now upgraded 2 webbooks using the method I’d described above, and both are merrily working away.
Remember, before upgrading to intrepid, make sure your installed versionn (8.04) has all the updates applied.
Cheers
I tried before your notes were published. All the updates for version 8.4 were installed before I started the update. I am not sure what went wrong, but even Alan’s expertise could not solve it. However, the cavalry has appeared, in the shape of a bootable memory stick from Elonex. I am going to give it a go this evening.
that is a really interesting suggestion. I haven’t tried OOo 3 yet but I would like to see the presenter console working.
you have admin access now. If anyone else wants to be able to post blog entries to the webbook blog then that is no problem at all, I can promote people to author level, all you have to do is register at http://webbookblog.com/wp-login.php and let me know in a comment that you want to be upgraded. As long as you have a history of posting sensible comments you will be allowed to post blog entries.
I have just realised what you mean about the missing PHP tags, I didn’t see the black text on the black background. It was in header.php, no idea what is does, as everything seemed to be working but it was mentioned here as a requirement http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/
I’d vote for Homebank as opposed to GNUCash
See here http://homebank.free.fr/index.php?id=20
Martyn
that does look good and it is in the repos so it can be included. I have always used Gnucash (I have been using it to run my business since 2003) but homebank looks like it would be better for more people.
Hi Sue
OK, Good luck
Happiness. My Webbook has come back to life. What a relief. Now I have to put all the settings back as I would like them, but I am not complaining because I have a Webbook that works. Elonex sent out a wristvault (a usb drive) by first class post yesterday (the day I rang them) which is good service.
I have also used GNUCash – like you, in a business context – but Homebank just seems to “fit” from a home finance point of view. No double entry concepts to worry about, easy interface etc
Lacks reporting capability, which is soon to be addressed I believe, and the 4.0 version (Beta) is nice. I guess if it gets more airtime it will get better. The lead developer seems to be quite open to suggestions.
A download would be great Alan, my son’s webbook took great exception to upgrading, and currently has only a black screen with a cursor on it. Elonex support have had a go at sorting it over the phone, but I think it has them baffled too..followed all their instructions…and it just rebooted to a black screen again, so “it’s been escalated to level 2 support”..sounds scary! Still, it’s teaching him a lot. Hopefully.
cheers
iain
gosh, I had better get that download sorted before you get escalated to level 3 support, I hate it when the phone rings! I am just installing a bittorrent tracker right now . . .
Wee rascal’s actually just managed to fix it! not bad for trial and error from a 13 year old. It’s actually restored to before the update, so now we can follow the instructions from those who’ve managed it successfully. He’s off to play with the Hydrogen drum machine he’d downloaded before the update.
Hi All
Additonal Software that would be good installed by default:
1. mysql server, client, jdbc and mysql administrator
2. gftp (Excellent file transfer client, not restricted to just ftp)
3. grsync (Excellent gui frontend to rsync, yes I used to use unison, but since finding grsync, I’m afraid grsync takes pole position. Perfect for making, and maintaining backups to other PC’s, and/or removeable hard drives)
4. digiKam (No real reason other than I use and like it)
5. ssh server, with as part of the first use script assigned to generating new server keys.
Also yes I think Thunderbird should be the default mail client.
I’m sure I’ll think of others as I go along
Cheers