User Interface Tricks

Next for my laptop linux install, I'm playing with compiz-fusion. This page from Lifehacker shows some of the neat effects, and I found a page at the How To Forge that explains what to install (I skipped the video card section).

No problems! I enabled some extra things on the configuration application, and they all seem to be working well except for the Expose effect. I especially like the super task switcher.

Next, I wanted to setup a dock at the bottom of the screen. Avant Window Navigator seems to be the thing, and a thread in Ubuntu Forums explains it all. AWN requires xserver-xgl, which in turn requires a 3D card. Now, I'm sure my built-in Intel video system is not 3D, but I figured I'd try it anyway. The dock worked pretty well, and some of the compiz-fusion effects were a little quicker, but window drawing, moving, and especially scrolling were dog slow. I played around a little, but ended up removing both. Oh well!

Linux Mint Dual Boot Install Started

I actually started my Linux Mint/Vista dual boot install yesterday, using this page as a basic guide. Unfortunately, the Vista Disk Management Shrink Volume tool wasn't able to give me any space. It declared that no space was available due to the use of a page file.

No matter, I can use something else. I found an old copy of gparted in my pile of Linux CDs, but decided to download a newer version. V 0.3.4-11 is the latest. I burned it and fired it up. However, I could never get it to boot, as it hung trying to install something for RAID disks (of which I have none). I tried to boot on another machine, just to see if the CD was OK, and it got past that point quickly, only to fail to start X. Just for yucks, I tried my older version (0.2.4.3) from last year. It booted fine, but the device scan never finished.

Time to punt. This morning I booted up to the Linux Mint Live CD and attempted to install gparted, and I found it was already there! V 0.3.3-2 is close enough to new for me! It ran fine, and I was able to shave 30GB from the hard drive in about 10 minutes. Suddenly, things are getting easy.

gparted - After Shrink

Before I go any further, I'm going to reboot into Vista to let it scan the disk and make sure things are OK.

...

After a quick scan, all is well (although Vista picked that moment to install some quick security fix that required another reboot - no biggie).

I guess now it's time to hit the Install icon and see what happens.

...

I like this graphical install tool better than the character based one I used with Ubuntu 7.04. I selected language, keyboard, and time zone without incident.

Whenever I get to the disk partition step, I get a little nervous. Sure, I've backed up the important stuff from the Vista partition, but it would still take a lot of time to get that back to the way I like it. Fingers crossed, I forged ahead.

My plan is to have a fat32 partition that I can use in both operating systems. It can be used to store shared configurations for Firefox and Thunderbird, and to store other files I may need from either, such as downloaded files and music. Here's a screen shot of the the partitioner just before I committed the changes:



It didn't like the fat32 partion mounted as /home, so I changed it to /shared while pushing the size down to 10GB. The root partition was increased to 20GB. This config was approved.

Well, it's time to push the final button. Here goes!

...

Success! I booted into Mint without incident. Interestingly, there are two entries for Vista in the GRUB list. I'll have to try them both out to see what they do.

After I logged in, I was notified that there were proprietary drivers available for the wireless - as covered in this earlier post. I'll configure it shortly.

I've got other things to work on: video settings for the two screens (monitor and laptop display), wireless, server access, and other software I've read about and would like to try. Watch for new posts as I try things out.

Wireless on the Laptop with Linux Mint

My experiments today involve using the laptop's wireless networking facilities with Linux Mint 4.0 (based on Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty). I had written earlier about the same attempts on Ubuntu 7.04, but found that those instructions no longer work (a URL involved in the configuration is no longer working).

Anyway, here's what I did:

(Note that I used a wired network connection during this configuration.)

First, this page outlined the steps to download and activate the restricted driver for the BCM4311 wireless chipset. Not too tough.

Unfortunately, the wireless didn't jump to life when I yanked the wire. The next step was to turn off the roaming mode and configure the network. I opened the Network Settings dialog and selected Properties on the wireless connection. After unchecking the Enable Roaming Mode box, I entered the network name (case sensitive!), password type (mine is WEP Key hexidecimal), and the network password (mine is ... hey!). I also selected Automatic Configuration (DHCP) under Connection Settings. I clicked OK and things were good!

Obviously, your settings will vary.

With roaming mode off, I guess I will have to reconfigure for each network I use. That will be the subject of a later experiment.

UPDATE: I almost forgot, use the iwlist eth1 scan command to search for wireless networks in your area. (Substitute your Ethernet adapter name for 'eth1', or leave it out to try them all.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: I'm having a tough time reproducing this configuration. In six tries, I've connected to the wireless network twice. (I even tried it with the standard issue Ubuntu 7.10 instead of Mint.) I can't really say what made it work, except possible reentering the wireless password. Probably not that.

It's tough to say that I would like to dump Vista for Linux, as I did XP on the old machine, since Vista just seems to work on this laptop. Sure, it's slow and there's the fear of viruses, trojans, worms, etc, but I was happy to come back after playing with the Mint Live CD today. I'll still setup a dual boot soon, just to play, and it may even become my primary operating system at some point, but I'm not taking Vista off quite yet.