sudo apt-get install powertop

For some more detailed suggestions this is a good start: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PowerManagement/ReducedPower

Since I will have to do a fair amount of traveling in the next year I was in need of upgrading my trusted workhorse of Toshiba Qosmio F60 to a more portable option that will be easier on the shoulders during long travels. After doing some research in the available options it came down between the Intel i7 variants of Samsung Series 9 and the Toshiba Z830.

Thanks to these sites for some useful content:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/
• http://www.linlap.com/wiki/toshiba+portege+z830-10f
• http://blog.stevenocchipinti.com/2011/12/toshiba-portege-z830.html
• http://www.bestultrabooks.co/

In the end it came down to Toshiba having full-size VGA, HDMI and Ethernet connectors at the rear of the unit (no need for carrying adapters) and getting a very decent price rebate for the Toshiba.

The first and only task in the included Windows 7 OS was to create a recovery USB drive using the Toshiba included utility (on the desktop). You need a 12GB USB stick (found out the hard way after buying an 8GB version with the unit on advice of the sales guy).

After booting from a USB stick created from the Ubuntu 11.10 ISO (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download) with Ubuntu Bootdisk Creator (or alternatively UnetBootin) I opted to wipe the whole SSD drive. If you are not sure that you want to stick with Ubuntu it might be safer to try running from USB or dual-boot.

Note: you need to use the USB3 connector on the right-hand side of the machine to boot (not the rear USB2 connectors). Press the F-12 Function key when turning the unit off and choose the USB Boot option.

It always gives me strange pleasure to wipe a pristine new machine from all the rubbish that manufacturers pre-install and start with a clean system that I can customise to my needs (without having redundant stuff cluttering the system and waste valuable resources).  So enjoy that part

The Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) installation was extremely smooth. As predicted by the previous research all the hardware was detected automatically. Even Bluetooth and Toshiba Function keys (screen brightness and display switching) work without any tweaking.

I am currently looking into some SSD specific tweaks thanks to this article on ZDNET. I will post future updates on further experiences when it comes to battery-life and other day-2-day issues.

Update: I have made a tweak to improve disk I/O parameters to improve SSD performance

Disable the ‘elevator’ I/O scheduler in the kernel by editing the default Grub config (/etc/default/grub)

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash elevator=noop"

Looks like this unit is definitely a good option for people looking for Ubuntu Notebook / Ultrabook hardware. Well done Toshiba ! Now I just want a refund for the wasted Windows license….

Enjoy your OPEN Ultrabook !

I discovered that I have audio issues on some Ubuntu Linux machines and found the following to fix the issues.

1) Install alsa-aoss

apt-get install alsa-oss

2) Save the Elluminate Java Webstard (.JNLP) file to a local folder – DO NOT OPEN IN BROWSER
3) Launch Elluminate using this command (in the folder you saved the JNLP)

aoss javaws meeting.jnlp

Thanks go to all people involved in this forum thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1081899

EDIT:

1) This assumes you are already running Sun (Oracle) Java JRE not the default OpenJDK as apparently Blackboard Collaborate does not play nice with the default OpenJDK. I have described the install on 11.10 here.

2) Make sure you have updated the alternatives for javaws (install only sets the java alternatives).

update-alternatives --config javaws

After some digging everything seems to be still via .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/

1) Create the desktop file

vim /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

2) Copy the following into the file (Note: adjust application name and path)

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Icon=/path/to/application/icon.xpm
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Programming IDE
Exec=env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 /path/to/application/eclipse
Categories=Application;Development;

3) Update the desktop database

update-desktop-database

UPDATE: According to this article: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/11/ubuntu-desktop-designers-clarify-on-configurability/ the Ubuntu developers have confirmed some more reconfigurability in future releases.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-plugin

Install getmail

apt-get install getmail4

create config directory

Create a subdirectory in users home folder (and change permissions)

mkdir .getmail
touch .getmail

create config file

Create a file such as .getmail/username.gmail

[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = imap.gmail.com
username = username@domain.tld
password = password
mailboxes = ("[Gmail]/All Mail",)

[destination]
type = Maildir
path = /path/to/storage/directory/

[options]
# print messages about each action (verbose = 2)
# Other options:
# 0 prints only warnings and errors
# 1 prints messages about retrieving and deleting messages only
verbose = 1
message_log = ~/.getmail/gmail.log

create data directories for storage

Create 3 sub-directories in your designated data directory

mkdir cur new tmp

run getmail

getmail -r username.gmail

Whilst this is more a ‘note to self’ rather than actual documentation – maybe it’s of use to somebody.

Thanks go to Matt Cutts: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/backup-gmail-in-linux-with-getmail/ for the start.

As a long-term user of a number of different Operating Systems and as SME Owner for the last 15 years I have overseen the gradual replacement of a number of proprietary software solutions with FOSS Alternatives. With the beginning of the new financial year however, we are planning to go another step further and are starting to change our default Operating System to Ubuntu (from MS Windows).

It is worth pointing out that I don’t have an issue with paying for software (after all we are partly in the software development business). We also happily pay quite a number of SaaS suppliers for their services (see list below) and support. My main issue is why I should pay license fees for standard software (i.e. Office Productivity Tools) when there is so many excellent community developed products out there that do the same (in some instances better, in some instances just adequate) job ? It is hard enough running a small business in the current climate.

One major benefit of changing over to a web-based (FOSS) approach to our back-end systems has been the ability to operate from anywhere. This has dramatically increased productivity for myself as well as staff being able to work from home more often. This is mainly due to changing back-end systems to browser based software, but also due to the fact that you can access the web-based software also on personal devices (such as phones).

Since licensing fees are only one part of the cost of running software it has to be said that support for users in the early days is certainly higher than just keeping the ‘stuff they know’ and have been taught at University / TAFE / Schools. Different tools will always require some learning curve to get familiar with the new environment.  However in the long run we have not seen a significant difference to the previous scenario.

For Software development reasons we still have to maintain a license for some of these systems for testing purposes, however it has been quite a while since we have actually done so for actual production purposes.

Advantages

• No license and reoccurring upgrade fees (other than service fees)
• Community support

Downsides

• Drivers (some drivers for Graphics Cards can still be a bit of a challenge)
• Accessories / devices (if you run a lot of (b)leading edge devices such as USB accessoroes, it can be a challenge to get appropriate Linux support)

It generally pays to check user forums (for Ubuntu there is a list of certified hardware) before buying accessories. However most common hardware (such as major phones and personal audio devices) have good support.

Show-stoppers / Challenges

In previous attempts when contemplating the phasing out of Windows as the Standard Operating Environment in our business we were faced with some show-stoppers such as our Accounting Package that was not available at all in a non-Windows environment. However we have since migrated all of our mission-critical applications into web-based & off-site hosted environments. With these changes the need for client-based software has rapidly diminished and the focus has shifted to web-browser support of critical systems.

Some challenges remain with new staff needing to be trained and sometimes convinced that there is other things out there than the packages they are familiar with. I have been advocating for changes in our Schools to teach the concepts of software rather than certain tools – ie. teach the concept of Word Processing rather than Microsoft Word. But I am realistic that these changes will not be implemented soon if at all.

One area we have not been able to change is Graphic Design. Whilst I am personally not convinced that GIMP/Inkscape are not able to replace the Photoshop/Illustrator combo I do not have the personal knowledge in that field and have hence given up trying to change this. Life is too short to be wasted listening to Graphic Designers whining to you daily that they need Adobe for XYZ.

Myths

I very often hear the following arguments:

“If you use this FOSS stuff that is owned by nobody you will not be supported”

One of the longest standing arguments and the easiest to answer. Most FOSS operating systems now have a number of commercial operations supporting.

As for community support there is an extremely active community around Ubuntu with a local Australian Team and literally thousands of community volunteers world-wide. And for those less comfortable relying on community support there are a growing number of commercial operations willing to support Open Source OS’s.

“If everybody can see the source code – isn’t that insecure ?”

Again one of the oldest FUD arguments. There is a detailed Wikipedia entry that explains the concept of Open Source Security and why most independent experts will assert the exact opposite.

“Proprietary OS’s are streamlined and much more efficient”

We found this one to be correct in some areas and completely false in others. To the contrary a number of tasks (such as adding network printers or network connections) are much more efficient on Ubuntu. Whilst the User Interfaces on proprietary systems are much more polished (eye-candy) they are not necessarily contributing much to an effective work practice. And when it comes to setting up new equipment there is no comparison whatsoever. It generally takes up to an hour to have a developer system configured with Software installs and other config tasks thanks largely to Linux package management tools (such as apt-get) which can be completely automated with a few lines of script. A similar developer system on Windows can take hours of idle install time and reboots galore.

“You will not save any money”

This point is the least exact and hardest to answer as it will largely depend on individual circumstances, in-house IT knowledge and support. For our part we have certainly saved cost in software licensing. However we generally have invested this in either being able to afford additional IT work done (custom workflows) or being able to invest in systems that would have been outside of budget.

Project Listing

As a practical exercise I thought I would share our Standard Operating Environment (SOE). Whilst not all of the software listed is Open Source (as the title obviously suggests) a substantial majority is.

Operating Systems

• Ubuntu 10.04 / 11.04 – default – http://ubuntu.com/

• Fedora 14/15 (mainly for our Sysadmin purposes as most of our Servers run on RHEL / CentOS)
• Windows (XP & W7) for hardware that can not be utilised on Ubuntu
• (OSX (single machine for testing & iOS compilation purposes))

Browsers

• Mozilla Firefox (preferred) – http://mozilla.org/firefox/
• Google Chrome (preferred) - http://www.google.com/chrome
• Microsoft Internet Explorer (testing only via Virtual Machine) http://microsoft.com/ie
• Apple Safari (testing only) - http://www.apple.com/safari/

Directory Services

• OpenLDAP
• Samba

Office / Productivity

• GoogleApps (with local backups)
• Webmail (nobody actually uses a desktop mail client these days)
• Webcalendar (shared calendars & resources)
• Open / Libre Office - http://www.libreoffice.org/

Multimedia

• OpenShot - http://www.openshotvideo.com/
• Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Graphics

• GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)
• Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/)
• Xara (http://www.xaraxtreme.org/)

Utilities

• Filezilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) FTP Client
• 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) File Compression
• KeePass (http://keepass.info/) – Password Manager
• PWGen (http://pwgen-win.sourceforge.net/) Password Generator

Development

• SciTE / Notedpad++ (a lot of our tech staff prefer text editors for smaller projects) - http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html / http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
• Eclipse (http://eclipse.org)
• Subversion - http://subversion.apache.org/
• Git - http://git-scm.com/

Backend Business Systems

• Zendesk Helpdesk Management(we have tried a number of self-hosted FOSS alternatives over the years, but opted for a fully supported SaaS solution) – http://zendesk.com/
• SAASU Finance – http://saasu.com/ (and I was glad to say good bye to MYOB)
• SugarCRM - http://www.sugarforge.org/
• Home-grown admin database system based on MySQL/PHP

Sysadmin

• PuttySSH - http://www.putty.org/
• Virtualbox – http://www.virtualbox.org/
• Nagios System Monitoring - http://www.nagios.org/

After casually using it for a few nights of use I am personally not surprised that HP decided to ditch this product. Compared to the current Tablet leaders the Touchpad is miles behind both Android and iOS and HP would have had to spend  serious money to even get close to the current functionality of the competition. And you can take a bet that both of these will not remain static. I was actually hoping that WebOS can be a serious competitor to the current duopoly, but after using this thing I have to say that it is not even close.

However I still think the AUD149 I spent for the 32GB model are actually well spent. Since WebOS has always been a very open platform built on a Linux base I knew it would not be a major effort to run other Open Source OS’s on this device. There is already a whole bunch of people working on a full Android port (see TouchDroid and XDA Devs).

But since I already have an Android Tab (Samsung Galaxy Tab 7”) I am more interested in other alternatives at this stage. As a current Ubuntu user I started looking around and after comparing some of the existing efforts found that the guys at Preware (WebOS Internals) have already done an excellent job in getting Ubuntu to run on top of WebOS, rather than replacing WebOS entirely. Which at the current stage of this seems to most reasonable choice.

The installation was a very smooth process from an existing Ubuntu machine (Windows users might find it a little more challenging).

I have documented the process in case it’s useful for others. This assumes a WIFI only 32 GB Touchpad as sold in Australia. Detailed instructions for all devices (such as other WebOS phones) are avaialble on the WebOS Internals Wiki. Hat-tip to these guys for the excellent work.

Install Preware

1. Set Device into Developer Mode: just type “webos20090606” into the ‘Just Type’ box on the home screen (once you have installed Preware you can install a patch to permanently un-hide the Developer Mode icon).
2. Check that you have Java JRE installed
3. Download latest version of Preware WebOS Quickinstall
4. Connect the Touchpad to your computer with the USB cable, and select “Just Charge” (do not select USB Drive)
5. Run WebOS Quick Install JAR. WebOS Quick Install will download and install the Novacom Driver for you if not yet installed.
6. Click the globe icon (third button on the right)
7. Search for Preware (in the Applications tab) and install

Apart from Preware itself I also installed OpenSSH and a few other useful packages from the WebOS Internals Homebrew Apps

Install MetaDoctor

Again the instructions here are for the Wifi Touchpad 32GB – check http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:MetaDoctor for details on other variants. The current version of MetaDoctor can be found here.

Pre-requisites: check if git is installed (apt-get install git)

git clone git://git.webos-internals.org/tools/meta-doctor.git
cd meta-doctor
mkdir downloads
cd downloads
wget http://palm.cdnetworks.net/rom/touchpad/p302r0d08012011/wifip302rod/webosdoctorp302hstnhwifi.jar
mv webosdoctorp302hstnhwifi.jar webosdoctorp302hstnhwifi-3.0.2.jar
cd ..
vim MAKEFILE
---------------------------------------
Uncomment:
ENABLE_DEVELOPER_MODE = 1
AUTO_INSTALL_PREWARE  = 1
ENABLE_TESTING_FEEDS  = 1
VAR_PARTITION_SIZE    = 8GB
SWAP_PARTITION_SIZE   = 512MB
EXT3FS_PARTITION_SIZE = 8GB

Changes:
DEVICE = touchpad
CARRIER = wifi
---------------------------------------
make all

The compile process takes a few minutes – COFFEETIME !!!

Edit: If you have a 16GB Touchpad make sure you reduce “VAR_PARTITION_SIZE” and “EXT3FS_PARTITION_SIZE” to fit with the smaller Flash Memory size (thanks to @Dan & @bob for comments)

cd build/touchpad-p302hstnh-wifi-3.0.2/
java -jar webosdoctorp302hstnhwifi-3.0.2.jar

For those who just want to run the MetaDoctor install without compiling it as described below I have made the JAR file available for download. As always with these things – use at your own risk. EDIT: Removed JAR due to licensing issue. You will HAVE to compile yourself.

Create Ubuntu partition

After the reboot when finishing the MetaDoctor install just run novaterm with the USB cable connected and mount the ext3fs partition

mount -o remount,rw /
mkdir -p /media/ext3fs
echo "/dev/mapper/store-ext3fs /media/ext3fs ext3   noatime,data=writeback   0   0" >> /etc/fstab
mount -a

Install Ubuntu

On the Touchpad run the Preware App and install the following

• Xecutah
• XServer
• Ubuntu 11.04 Chroot

Start Xecutah and run (in the order listed)

1. XServer
2. Xterm
3. Ubuntu Chroot

You will have a Ubuntu commandline prompt and can use apt-get from here on to install any ubuntu app (provided there is an ARM port for it).

apt-get install lxde
startlxde

TIPS: if your keyboard covers some of the X Window keep the keyboard icon on the soft-keys pressed and choose the XS size.

Enjoy !

However since the 10.04 Repository still uses Firefox 3.6 you need to add a PPA repo to upgrade to Firefox 4.

Either go to Ubuntu Software Center > Software Sources and click the ‘Other Software’ tab. Press ‘Add’ and enter ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable

After adding the PPA you will be prompted to update your sources. Once done you can head to System > Administration > Update Manager to perform an upgrade

Alternatively you can do this via Terminal (Applications > Terminal).

add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk