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Improve Ubuntu Dapper 6.06

envelope — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 13:13:01 +0000

A couple of ways to easily improve Dapper.

Copy your TrueType fonts across from /media/x/WINDOWS/Fonts/ to ~/.fonts/
This means web pages display more so as they would in Windows. If you can find the Vista fonts (Calibri, Candara etc.) install them. Candara makes a nice system font.
sudo apt-get install applet-deskbar
This provides a nice way of launching commands, applications and searches (even better if you’ve also installed Beagle). You’ve probably seen it in a screencast of Gnome 2.14.
sudo apt-get install beagle python-beagle
Install the Beagle desktop indexing agent and its real-time search helper

Been busy?

envelope — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 13:01:38 +0000

It’s been quite some time since my last post… I had to wipe and reformat my laptop, so everything went bye-bye. Thankfully I had a recent backup of everything in the slightest bit of interest.

I didn’t install SuSE straight off – I wanted to have a bit of a play with some other distros first.

First up was Fedora Core 5, which I had grabbed as soon as it had been made available on the mirrors ahead of its official release. As with all of the recent RedHat and Fedora releases, the distro has polish. The installation is smooth, though the partitioning tool isn’t as good as that of Mandriva (but then, which is?) There are several downsides to Fedora: lack of media support (notably MP3), and lack of NTFS support. In addition, the installer only supports formatting to Ext2 and Ext3, nothing more recent like ReiserFS. Anaconda is very nice, though. The main downside for me, however, is the lack of OOB support for my Intel 2200BG wireless card.

Next up was Ubuntu Badger 5.10. It’s not a bad distro as is, but it doesn’t like WPA. I decided to do a dist-upgrade to Dapper 6.06. This is a nice release, even though it’s still at the development stage. Network-manager has been upgraded recently so that it does support WPA, and the distro has suddenly become useful.

technorati tags: linux, ubuntu, fedora

Custom GP2X firmware; installation how-to

envelope — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:53:15 +0000

Version 0.0.4 of the CramFS custom firmware (and a version with the blue Poison skin) has been released for the GP2X. It boasts two main features. Firstly, it write-protects the NAND to stop naughty programs saving things to that area, and secondly, most importantly, it decreases the boot time significantly – instead of the 30-seconds-to-a-minute that I’d previously had, it’s now in the region of 10-20 seconds. Wow.

It is built from the official 1.4.0 sources, and also adds a couple of extra touches. For example, a console app is included by default, so you can browse the GP2X’s Linux subsystem. You can also hook this up to a PC and log in to a console. Cool, but pretty pointless if you aren’t a developer.

There are two stages to install this custom firmware (after downloading the file, obviously ):

Copy the cramfs-0.0.4.dump and flash_cramfs.gpu to the root of an SD card. Boot, go into Utilities and run the flash program. The screen will blank for quite a while – make sure your batteries are well charged, or ideally use an AC adapter.
Turn off once it’s done, and copy across gpx2kernel.img to the SD card root. Insert and power on; the flash process will take place automatically (this is exactly the same as for any firmware update).

You should notice the next boot to be amazingly quick. It really is a nice peice of work.

For more info and full instructions, go here.

technorati tags: gp2x, cramfs

GP2X firmware update 1.4.0

envelope — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 23:01:45 +0000

Quite a jump from 1.2.1. Interestingly the boot screen still says 1.2.1, but info says 1.4.0 and I’ll believe it.

The file manager ("Explorer") has had an upgrade (it’s now actually useful), and either because I reformatted my RS-MMC card* or due to the new firmware it’s picking up my card nearly every time now. Also, it’s being picked up correctly in Windows as a USB drive/memory card. Good stuff. I like it when things get fixed quickly.

The only downside so far is that reinserting the card does not trigger a rescanning of its contents, so any new application won’t show up.

I’m well impressed with some of the native games available for the GP2X. Check out Kobo Deluxe and Noiz2sa for starters.

* Instead of Format… from Explorer I used Disk Management and formatted as FAT32 with 512B cluster size.

technorati tags: gp2x

Flock-style bookmarks in Firefox

envelope — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 21:12:36 +0000

If you check out the latest Deer Park you will likely notice a new button on the bookmarks toolbar. This button takes you to a new XUL menu surprisingly reminiscient of the Flock favourites manager. This is a good thing, as I really like the bookmark system in Flock, not least the fact that typing in the search box checks against both history and bookmarks, before pressing enter takes you to Google etc.

technorati tags: firefox, flock

It arrived safely

envelope — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:31:49 +0000

I have just taken delivery of my GP2X, and am pleased to say it arrived safe and sound via airmail from Hong Kong. Thanks Lik Sang.

Initial impressions weren’t good. The plastic felt cheap, and the unit itself didn’t feel that sturdy, especially compared to the PSP (plus the plastic screen cover arrived scratched). However, it’s also half the price. Once the batteries go in the weight changes and after using it for about an hour I’ve got used to the build. It’s almost as if it just needed a bit of use to firm things up.

There are an awful lot of resources already for this thing, considering it’s only been shipping for about the last two weeks. There are several very accomplished emulators, and I’ve been having a great deal of fun playing old Megadrive (Genesis) games. Sonic has a strange appeal on the device. I need to install a SNES emulator and find some other games I played when I had a machine.

I haven’t yet tried the TV out down to the fact I don’t have an adapter for the S-Video end of the GP2X cable.

There are a couple of annoyances I have with the GP2X. Firstly, it doesn’t reliably detect my expansion card. This may be because I’m using the 64MB RS-MMC (with adapter, before you ask) that came with my Nokia 6630 (which I had replaced with a 512MB), but I have tried it with a 1GB Viking SD that I normally use in my Dell Axim, and the same thing happens; either anything on the card isn’t viewable or it stalls on boot.

Secondly, the AC adapter input is on the right-hand side, right where you would normally hold the unit to get to the action button with your right thumb. It’s not unusable, but the plug and cable can get in the way.

Finally, the device isn’t detected correctly in Windows when plugged into a USB port. This means I have to remove the card and use a reader when transferring data. However, surprise surprise, it works perfectly in my install of SuSE.

Is it worth the money? Yeah. Is it for everyone? No.

technorati tags: gp2x

Hooray! It unbroke!

envelope — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 22:14:34 +0000

Just before I gave up entirely and reinstalled, I thought I’d try deleting the config for the wired networking from YaST, and now wireless works correctly again. Woo!

I think for some reason everything networky was being passed to the first interface, i.e. wired, rather than the working interface. The wireless card was getting an IP address, and I could ping the router, but for some reason it was getting no further. There’s probably an explanation and a workaround, but at the moment I don’t really care. If it works, great.

Still waiting for my GP2X…

And, incidentally, my Logitech G15, which has been on order for a month. Gah.

technorati tags: linux, suse

Opera 9 weekly builds

envelope — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:49:32 +0000

Excellent. Opera are releasing weekly updated builds for version 9. Get the latest for Windows and for Mac. No *nix yet.

technorati tags: opera

In anticipation

envelope — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:20:45 +0000

At least I have this to look forward to… the Gamepark GP2X Second Edition started shipping recently, so I decided to take the plunge and order one – after all, it’s only about £100. Runs on 2 AA batteries, has an SD card slot, TV out, though no wireless. However, I think it has USB host, which is nice, and it should be possible to use an SD wifi card.

Best bit is that it runs on a Linux core, and there is a huge software scene already.

technorati tags: gaming, handheld, gp2x

Ah, crap… not again…

envelope — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:05:33 +0000

And again, something broke. I enabled both network interfaces (i.e. wired and wireless), rather than just the wireless, and now although I can get a network address DNS querying won’t work. I can ping my router, but no further. Ack. I really don’t want to reinstall again, so I’ll have a play with the network settings again.

technorati tags: linux, suse, wireless