Facebook Chat with Empathy in Ubuntu

Last July I posted a tutorial and a series of links to get Facebook Chat working in Pidgin. Since then I’ve changed my IM program to Empathy. Since Facebook still hasn’t bothered to get XMPP support for Facebook Chat yet I really wanted some way of getting it working in Empathy.

Thankfully, some wonderful people out there on the internet already have. The process is slightly different from that of the Pidgin tutorial but should be achievable for most of you.

The first thing to do is go and download this plugin (written for Pidgin, but don’t let that put you off) created by Eion Robb.

Next, you will need to follow these instructions which first appeared on Ubuntu Forums. Enter them into the terminal as follows.

wget https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=20810
sudo mv attachment.cgi?id=20810 /usr/share/telepathy/managers/haze.manager
wget https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=20811
sudo mv attachment.cgi?id=20811 /usr/share/mission-control/profiles/bigbrownchunx-facebookim-haze.profile

Now restart Empathy and you should be able to add your Facebook account.

Good Luck!

Getting Windows 7 RC on a USB stick from Ubuntu.

Well everyone is jumping on the Windows 7 bandwagon right about now and so will I. Although extremely happy with Jaunty I just had to try out the new Windows.

Originally I downloaded the ISO from Microsoft and tried it out through VirtualBox.  I must first of all say that in my opinion it is a massive improvement on Vista. More responsive and an overall better look and feel. After tinkering for a few days I was going to put it on another machine. Unfortunately I didn’t have any DVD-RWs around and so I needed an alternative.

Having installed various Linux distros on my Eee PC I was relatively familiar with installing an OS from a USB stick. However would installing Windows to a USB stick with Ubuntu be the same?

Short answer : not really. Although easy, the experience with Windows requires a small amount of tinkering but is definitely still easy.

Firstly, through Synaptic or whatever you’re comfortable with, install GParted.

Secondly, get a USB stick, at least 4gb and using GParted format the stick to NTFS, and flag it as ‘boot’

Thirdly, download the Windows 7 ISO file from Microsoft and using your archive manager of choice extract all the files from it.

Lastly, copy all the files extracted from the ISO to the USB stick.

That should be it. A bootable USB stick with which you can install Windows 7.

Good Luck.

The State of Open Source Flash in Jaunty.

Although by no means an open source zealot, I really like to try, where possible, to choose an open alternative to software on my computers. In some respects, this has been easy, Ogg Vorbis, for example, has been not only an open, but a superior, alternative to MP3. However, one area which routinely bugs me is Flash. There are two projects out there attempting to deliver. Swfdec and Gnash. I gave both a spin on pre release Ubuntu Jaunty to see if they can compete with the proprietary Adobe flashplugin-nonfree package.

I tested both packages on the three flash heavy websites I would use most often. BBC iPlayer, Youtube and Last.fm. I used the packages available in the repositories, which contains the most recent version of Gnash but not swfdec. Unfortunately, despite the hard work of both projects, it just doesn’t seem to be worth switching just yet.

Gnash (mozilla-plugin-gnash 0.8.4-0ubuntu1) refuses to work on any of the sites I frequent. It will draw the various players, albeit slowly, but refuse to play the content.

Swfdec (swfdec-mozilla 0.8.2-1ubuntu1) does a little better. It will play Youtube clips with little or no problem, unfortunately like Gnash it will fail to play anything on iPlayer or Last.fm. A general aspect of swfdec that I really appreciated was that it did not automatically play any flash content. Instead it drew a player and presented you with a play button instead. A great feature for the bandwidth conscious.

I know that this is by no means an exhaustive test, however, for me, Jaunty will not be the release that I move to open source flash. However, this is no reflection on the Gnash and Swfdec projects volunteers, as their task is pretty huge.

Crunchbang Linux & EEE PC 701

Poor blogging discipline aside, another key trait of mine is formatting my computers and starting again. Back in the bad old days this simply meant reinstalling XP, because I didn’t know any better. Things would go faster for a while and then it would be slow and chunky all over again. Every reinstallation required trawling the web looking for all the required drivers because keeping the original CD’s or a list somewhere would have been too intelligent.

Now however, I have Linux. I can wipe the computers and start again every two hours if I want (I don’t achieve this magnificent rate of change because if I did my wife would bludgeon me to death), each time with a new OS, new desktop environment and radically different approaches to everything. All for free, and no hunting for drivers.

The latest manifestation of this mental problem is my Eee PC. Again.

On Saturday morning I removed Ubuntu with Netbook Remix and installed CrunchBang Linux. Specifically, I chose CrunchEee, a distro aimed unsurprisingly at the Eee PC.

CrunchBang uses the OpenBox desktop environment and a variety of lightweight applications. It is however based on Ubuntu 8.10 and so contains the wealth of software available on the Ubuntu repositories. In addition to this it includes the Medibuntu repositories containing several closed source applications, such as Skype, and the necessary files to watch DVD’s, not an issue on my Eee PC however.

Using Unetbootin as before, the installation was flawless and quick. All my hardware was recognised with the wireless card worked out of the box. As I said the computer feels noticably faster and a helpful list of key combinations helps me rapidly launch applications without using the Eee’s tiny touchpad.

Unlike Gnome and KDE the OpenBox main menu is opened with a right click and maintained through a text config file. This probably rules it out for the average user but allows you a great deal of control in keeping your menu clean and up to date.

Conky, a lightweight system monitor, is installed and running by default, helpfully this immediately showed me just how little resources it was using on my Eee PC which is thankfully now running cooler as well.

All in all I have had a very good experience with Crunch Bang so far, and although my neurosis will probably dictate that I remove it and shove something else on I would recommend it to anyone.

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex & Eee PC 701

Well following on from Hardy Heron on my Eee PC I thought I would give Intrepid Ibex a spin. Ubuntu 8.10 will be released in it’s final form in October and it has just recently passed Alpha 5 stage. If you’re interested you can see it’s release schedule here.

I’m not going to mention any of the general improvements and new versions of things of which there are many. What I will do however, is focus on what Eee specific improvements have been made and what still needs to be done.

Firstly I installed it following the method outlined in my Hardy post, however I stopped before installing the ricey script as I wanted to see what would work out of the box. You can grab the Alpha 5 .iso from here.

The installation went very well and seemed to be pretty quick. So far, so good and it only got better.

Webcam : Works out of the box.

Wireless : Works, but you have to untick the Atheros drivers in “Restricted Device Drivers”

Shutdown : Doesn’t work. (Launchpad Bug #126140)

Sound : Doesn’t work for me, but I’m not sure if thats my fault or Ubuntu’s.

Boot Time : I have no real firm evidence of this but in a quick comparison between a clean Intrepid and a used Hardy on my wife’s Eee Intrepid seems to boot a lot faster. No need to moan I know this is in no way conclusive.

Other than that I am really very happy with how it went. A massive step forward as far as I’m concerned.

Persistent USB Ubuntu is a pain in the ass.

For a while now I’ve been trying to get a persistant install of Ubuntu on my 2gb USB Stick. I wanted the ability to chop and change programs etc and update the whole system. Basically I wanted a portable, up to date and secure way to have access to my desktop easily. It would also be a cool way to show people Ubuntu on their own PC without having to confuse them explaining what a live CD was.

However, everything I have tried so far has been unsatisfactory. There are, from what I can tell, three differing ways to pursue my aim.

Use Unetbootin to basically create a live USB. This is handy for installing Ubuntu to computers without a CD drive, like my Eee PC. Both links have instructions on how to achieve this. Advantages of this approach are that it is very easy and very fast. Disadvantages, it isn’t persistent.

Follow Pendrivelinux.com’s instructions to create a persistent USB install of Hardy Heron. Advantages of this approach, it does give you a lot of persistence in terms of appearance, programs and some updates. Disadvantages you can’t update everything, some system updates won’t go through. It also requires a lot of command line work, which although relatively straightforward could be intimidating if you aren’t used to it.

Lastly, simply load up an Ubuntu Live CD and install Ubuntu to your USB stick as if you were installing it to your hard drive. There is a slight difference to the normal approach and that is domcumented by Pendrivelinux here. This is the only method I haven’t tried yet because it requires at least a 4gb USB stick. Advantages, should be completely persistent. Disadvantages, requires a large USB stick. There seems to be some debate as to just how portable it would be given that the install would be aimed at the computer your USB stick was plugged into during install, not any subsequent computers.

Anyway, now you can make a better choice that just trial and error.

Update: For a very important caveat to the last option see David Wong’s post below.

Apt-Cacher, Ubuntu & Laughing at Download Limits

One of the main (in my opinion!) differences between Australia and Northern Ireland concerns the internet. At home we didn’t have any download limit and a pretty fast connection. Here however, we have a fast (though nothing like at home) connection and a download cap through Bigpond. It was 12gb but I decided to pay to kick it up to 25gb. Anyway even though thats quite a bit I really wanted to try and make that stretch as far as possible. So I searched for a solution and found this.

Apt-Cacher. Basically, Apt-Cacher runs on one of your local machines and all other local machines simply update through it. So only one local machine has to download the packages. If all your machines use exactly the same packages (unlikely but bear with me) and you have 4 machines then updates will only take up 25% as much bandwidth as they had before, they are also a lot faster. It’s also relatively easy (if a bit awkward) to install.

Install the package apt-cacher in your preferred way.

To check if it has installed go to http://127.0.0.1:3142 (replace 127.0.0.1 with the relevant machines local IP if doing it on another network machine). Basically you should see an apt-cacher page.
You can tinker with individual apt-cacher settings by opening “/etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf” Helpfully this file also explains what each setting means aswell. The one setting you need to change is “Autostart” from 0 to 1.

Next step is to copy all the local packages on your machine so that Apt-Cacher wont need to download them again. You can use this command. (from here)

sudo /usr/share/apt-cacher/apt-cacher-import.pl /var/cache/apt/archives

Next you need to tell all your machines to download from apt-cacher on the local network as opposed to the remote repository. Simply open up your /etc/apt/sources.list (take a backup) and add the local IP of the apt-cacher machine to the various repository links. Like this example.

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner

becomes

deb http://192.168.0.101:3142/archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner

Now update your machines and you should be done!

If you run into any problems there are lots of other resources online to help you. The two Ubuntu Tutorials linked to first probably helped me the most.

Ubuntu Tutorials Original Tutorial

Ubuntu Tutorials Original Tutorial Revisited

Ubuntu Community Help

Nick Andrew

Debuntu.org Tutorial

My EeePC 701 and how I put Ubuntu 8.04 on it.

Some of you may know I bought myself an EeePC 701 the other day. If you didn’t know that you do now. I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Got it?

I had a choice of the XP or Linux version, I grabbed a black Linux one and messed about with it in the car on the way home ( I wasn’t driving ). It had a built in webcam and microphone, both good quality, handy as I want to stay in touch online with my folks back home. No wires trailing around all over the place. I gave the default Xandros install a try for about an hour, but it wasn’t for me. I even tried switching off the Simple Mode to get to a full KDE desktop but again, it wasn’t for me. Mostly because I don’t really like KDE.

Anyway I wanted to fire Ubuntu 8.04 on to it, because, well, I did. From reading a few installation tips it seemed like this would be quite hard, with some hardware not working straight away, like the webcam, wireless and the microphone. Lot’s of these scare stories didn’t come to pass at all. Here’s the steps I took, it was pretty easy. This list is an amalgamation of many different instructions, this combination I found to be the easiest for me, however I make no guarantee that it will work for anyone else! So be careful.

1. Download Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD. (Link)
2. Download Unetbootin (Link)
3. Insert USB Stick
4. Use Unetbootin to create a bootable 8.04 USB Stick (Instructions)
5. Boot EeePC into USB Stick
6. Install 8.04 (I used one big EXT2 partition with no swap)
7. Restart (Hopefully into Ubuntu!)
8. Go Online with Ethernet card (Wireless won’t work yet)
9. Go to http://eee.ricey.co.uk/ and download his great script.
10. Make it executable (Right click on icon, Permissions, Allow Executing File as Program)
11. Run it in the terminal and let it do it’s thing.
12. Voila

That’s all I did and I have a great working Ubuntu EeePC!

There are still a few things you may want to do like enabling CPU scaling to help it stay cool. There are a whole heap on online instruction manuals to help you, many in more detail than this. I just found that this worked well for me. Good Luck.

More Help :

Ricey

Netpatia (Ubuntu on a USB Stick, Ubuntu EEE Pc Hardware Support)

Ubuntucat

Ubuntu Forums

Facebook Chat with Pidgin in Ubuntu

Until Facebook actually support Jabber as promised there is a great plugin for Pidgin which let’s you use Facebook Chat like any other protocol. It was created by a guy called Eoin Robb and is hosted up on Google Code. You can find the project page with links to the various downloads here. It was easy to set up and update in Ubuntu which has been handy as there has been 27 updates so far.

Just download the facebook_icons.zip file and extract it to /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/protocol. Then download the .deb file, install and you’re done. Keep checking the page for updates and if there are any download the new .deb and install it again.

Once that’s done just add your Facebook Chat account to Pidgin as you would add anything else. Screen name is the email address you used when you registered with Facebook. Your full buddy list won’t appear straight away but will gradually build up as more of your friends appear online. According to the plugin’s future plans wiki this will all be addressed in the future.

Hopefully this won’t have to be done forever, wish they would hurry up though.