One of the wonderful things I discovered this weekend in this life as a computer slave is Limewire for Ubuntu. Apparently this has been out since May of this year according to the Limewire Blog. Until today I had been downloading music files through KTorrent, which was fine, but when I wanted only a selection from the entire albums available for download, I had to pick and deselect from the torrent list before I could get my one file. That’s why I would choose Limewire over KTorrent for downloading music. Downloading and installing Limewire for Ubuntu is quite easy. You can follow the steps that begin on the Limewire Download page until it leads you to the screen where it asks you which version you’d like to download. If you are on Ubuntu, choose the Linux (DEB - Ubuntu, Debian) package and save it inside your Home Folder. I have a subfolder called Installers where I save — you guessed it — installer files, so that’s where I saved LimeWireLinux.deb. The file is just under 6MB in size.

When the download was complete, I went to my Installers folder and right-clicked on LimeWireLinux.deb and chose “Open with GDebi Package Installer” from the fly-out menu. I’m not scared of Terminal and I do dutifully copy and paste commands from the forums I learn stuff from, but when I can have Ubuntu do the job for me, I do. The Package Installer window opened and I clicked on the button that said Install Package and in a couple of minutes I had a working Limewire installation.

All I wanted at first was to find a way to get around the ghost slash key on the built-in keyboard to stop depressing itself at the most inopportune moments—like when i’m entering a password—or hard-coding html. When I realized there was no way I could stop it short of removing it, that’s what I did. It took less than 30 minutes to disassemble, remove connector, re-assemble. Piece of cake, thanks to Irisvista.com and its guides to dismantling just about every model Toshiba laptop there is. So off the connector goes, put the keyboard back in so it still looks like a good laptop, and then off to shop for a mini keyboard that will fit snugly into the Targus along with the rather hefty Satellite Pro, which Sam has once referred to as Lazaria, one who was brought back to life. At first I had my eye on the Okion Handio which I saw at the Office Warehouse in SM Sucat. Rather steep price for my lean wallet at P600, so I let it lie while waiting for that extra bit of cash. When it did come, opportunity led me into Electroworld’s doors at the Mall of Asia where they were out of stock in Okion’s, but did have the A4Tech KLS-5UP in black and silver. Although I would have preferred the all-black model, the A4Tech KLS-5UP was almost half the price of the Okion.

With an external keyboard, I didn’t have to worry about feeling the heat from the laptop on my wrists, and the A4Tech’s Anti-RSI design does help a lot in the way of comfort. Now with the keyboard problem dealt with, I could start on the other problems I had, such as connecting to the VPN at the office. Google-ing solved that particular one, after weaving through piles of comments and advice in various forums, I came across this blogpost that solved both the VPN connection setup and why I could not connect to the VPN with my wireless. The post was written for Edgy Eft users, but it worked like a charm in Feisty.

Even the issue I had with the keypad cursor keys has been solved. When I first started out in Ubuntu I was quite piqued at the way the cursor keys would take a screenshot instead of taking me left right up or down. After a bit of experimenting I realized that for the keypad cursor keys to work as they should I had to press the Windows key. This may be remedied in time when keyboard manufacturers release Linux drivers for their products. In fairness, when you go System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layouts, there are three A4Tech drivers to choose from, it’s just that there is no driver for this particular model.

This long weekend I will spend ironing out the last few kinks—printing over the network (done! via CUPS and selecting the Edimax print server as a UNIX Printer LPD), getting VCD’s to run in Kaffeine (CAN’T—it’s a documented bug in Feisty). DVDs work ok but I haven’t figured out why it can’t play VCD’s—very important when we take Lazaria on the road up north week after next just so Maia will have a portable CD/DVD player on which to play her Dora and Barbie movies. Too bad PLDT’s WeRoam card does not have Linux drivers, otherwise Maia may even have the luxury of mobile connectivity. Too much for a three-year-old, you think?

is what this old Toshiba Satellite Pro M10 seemed to scream at me, after its original hard disk quit yesterday afternoon. No thanks to the nut on the keyboard who ran Acronis on it about 5 or 6 times just to get the partitioning right for several Linux-based operating systems to work. Started with DSL or Damn Small Linux desktop just to make sure the machine still works and managed to get a working system after a frugal install (many thanks to ArsGeek), but nooo the nut had to download the latest Ubuntu v 7. 04 Feisty Fawn and install that. In fairness, the Pakluy (eldest son of nut) had already complained about the slowness of the machine two weeks ago, while it was still on pirata WinXP — well technically it wasn’t illegal, as this machine does have a WinXP license sticker smack on its bottom — but the original owner (not the nut) had lost the restore CD and with it all the attendant drivers.

Enter into the picture the portable mini-HD pasalubong by Kumpare Paran, Diony to all his Friendsters, which when un-cased turned out to be a Toshiba laptop HD! Thus the cogs started to turn in the nut’s noggin — would this be a suitable replacement HD? Only one way to find out.

And found out the nut did, via this really truly useful site called Irisvista.com, which features clear photos of what you should be doing looks like, each and every step of the way.

So the nut managed to swap working HD with fried HD. And successfully install Ubuntu on this very laptop that the nut is writing this post with.

The geek details so far:

Machine: Toshiba Satellite Pro M10
RAM: 256mb
HD: 40gb
Built-in WiFi, SD Card Reader, 2 USB Ports, CD-RW/DVD Drive

OS: Ubuntu v 7. 04 Feisty Fawn

What works so far:
DVDs play with Kaffeine (although it won’t play VCDs)
USB Flashdrive auto mounts
WiFi and wired connections
Local Networking / File Sharing
Skype (need to add the debian skype repository in synaptic manager)
Kodak EasyShare CX7330 - plug & play (added May 1)
VPN Connection to Office Network (added May 9)

What I haven’t yet found out if they work:
SD Card reader
Infrared
Bluetooth - just realized machine is “upgradeable” NOT “enabled” so i’m forgetting about this one

Very very useful links:

http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.ubuntu.com/support
http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php
http://wiki.ubuntu.com
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+addticket
http://www.arsgeek.com/
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.debian.org/