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YaFSUG: Projectz.
My Desktop OS: An upgrade from Edubuntu Breezy to Dapper
By Vincent Angus Williams - scribe63

To exploit one of the tenets of FOSS, a users freedom of choice, i exercise this right by using several Desktop Environments and Window Managers with the same or different Distros, for what they have to offer and or do best within a given criteria.

About Edubuntu
This article is based on my Edubuntu Workstation.
This was initially Edubuntu based on Ubuntu Breezy with added DEs and WMs Kubuntu, Fluxbox, Xfce, and E17.

Name Type Platform Processor Description
THT Workstation Desktop PIV 3.06Hz Home office workstation.
Introduction: Go Desktop Environments
Window Managers: Go
Themes
File Managers
Text Editors: Go
Multimedia
Internet: Go
Package
Management: Go
Office
Graphics: Go
Edutainment
Development: Go
Hardware: Go Summary: Go Screenshots: VIEW

Hardware:
Graphic Display Card .
I went to ubuntu's web site to see what is the procedure to re-install and upgrade the proprietary nvidia driver for my 'NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2)' display card. In this process i will see if i can get the Tv out to work also.
I went to 'https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia' and followed the instructions.

  • 1. I first removed nvidia-settings, because the instruction stated if using dapper LTS, nvidia-settings, and nvidia-xconfig packages will remove glx.
  • 2. Since i have a GeForce2 card i made sure nvidia-glx-legacy was still selected and marked it for re-installation.
  • 3. Because i have a P4 processor, i selected linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-23-686 to match the processor and installed kernel and marked the old installed version for the previous kernel for complete removal.
Display Card

Installation went good, now it's time to configure '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'. I'm suppose to run 'sudo nvidia-xconfig' > close open applications > and restart the X-Server with ctrl-alt-backspace.
Running 'sudo nvidia-xconfig' did not make sense to do, it was recommended to be un-installed. So i just did ctrl-alt-backspace and X restarted without any errors.

Now i'll try to see to set up the Tv-Out using the Twin View function first.
xorg
  • 1. I added the to xorg.conf,
    Option "TwinView" "true"
    Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
    Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
    Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
    Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-50"
    Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
    Option "MetaModes" "1024x768,1024x768;800x600,800x600;640x480,640x480; 512x384,512x384"
  • 2. Since i'm using S-Video i'll change COMPOSITE to S-VIDEO.
  • 3. Now i need to restart X
X Monitor

This did not work, just got video noise on the TV and humming in my speakers. The only changes i noticed, was that my computer monitor resolution changed, because everything is bigger and there was some flickering.
There is another more extensive way to try to get this working, so i'll give it a shot. For some reason the other method did not work either, but my 1280x1024 resolution was restored so i'll leave this for another time.

Display Card

USB:
Devices connected to the USB port via, either a card reader or direct work with their normal prompts or automatically. I connected my SMSC Model: USB 2 HS-CF/MS/SM/MMC Rev: 1.25 USB-2.0 6-in-1 card reader to the USB port, inserted a compact flash disk, the system recognised it and i went the through the prompts and process to display it's contents.

Card Reader Compact Flash

I connected an external USB hard drive to the USB port, the system recognised it and i went through the process to display it's contents.

USBHD USBHD

I connected a digital still camera (Canon Powershot A95) to the USB port, turned on the camera, the system did not recognised it and i was not able to display it's contents. I also tried to access the camera through gtKam, but the program could not detect or initialize the camera.

USB Digital Camera

But not long after it dawned on me to not just turn on the camera, but to also switch it to it's viewing/playback mode. As soon as i flipped the switch, the system recognised it and i went through the prompts and process to display it's contents in gtKam and digikam, but not in konqueror like the others. As a matter of fact konqueror went wild for some unknown reason to, not to long after whole trying to use it to view the photos.

gtkam digikam
                                  USB       USB Digital Camera USB USB

Firewire:
I connected an external Firewire hard drive to the firewire port, the system recognised it and i went through the process to display it's contents. Or some reason i'm unable to write to this hard disk after it's automatically mounted, and even when i mount it as a regular user. I messed around with the UDEV rules but didn't get this permission issue fixed yet. I did not have this issue with the external USB hard disk. hmmmmm

Firewire HD Firewire HD

I started to connect a digital motion camera (Sony DCR-TRV480 NTSC), but soon realized i had the firewire cable($15) connected to another computer and i'm not about to disconnect it.
I eventually got another firewire cable for the camera to see what gives.
First up, after connecting the camera to the computer, it was initialised as a '/dev/raw1394'

raw1394

But when i opened kino and checked it's preferences, the IEEE 1394 tab indicated that 'The IEEE1394 Subsystem is Not Responding', it also hinted that the raw1394 module has to be loaded and i may not have read or write privileges to '/dev/raw1394'. I first checked to see if the module was loaded, this is what was returned.

lsmod | grep raw1394
raw1394 31596 0
ieee1394 306520 4 dv1394,raw1394,sbp2,ohci1394

Seems like the necessary modules are loaded.
The group disk did not, and as far as i know does not usually have any members. But 'dev/raw1394' does have 'root:disk' as it's owner and group. This worked on the previous installation, but it's not working out the box right now so i'll have to get back to it.

kino

Once again i did some research and poking around and this is what unfolded. It was a permission issue with the iee1394 bus. It was not in the 'video' group for this reason,
'# IEEE1394 (firewire) devices
# Please note that raw1394 gives unrestricted, raw access to every single
# device on the bus and those devices may do anything as root on your system.
# Yes, I know it also happens to be the only way to rewind your video camera,
# but it's not going to be group "video", okay?'
So i added my self to the disk group, and now i'm able to control the DV camera and view video before capturing with kino.

Kino

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