Interested in Torrents?..

Shevins posted a good run through of the different Bit Torrent programs available for Ubuntu here!

He points out some of the good/bad points of each program & lets you know the reasons he uses the ones he does. Personally I’m thinking of giving Deluge a try (deb package can be downloaded from here). I normally use Azureus, but this seems to break every time Ubuntu gets updated 😦

This has come in pretty handy for me at the moment, as I’ve just got my GP2X back from having the joy pad mod installed & I needed to.. erm.. complete my collection of old games again 😉

Thanks Shevin

ATTENTION All VAIO OWNERS!

A couple of days ago IntuitiveNipple started a new thread on the Ubuntu forums. He’s started working with Mattia Dongili on the Sony Notebook Control/Sony PI sony-laptop driver for the Linux kernel, to try & improve support for the following Sony VAIO laptop features..

Fn keys, screen dimmer, bluetooth, wireless LAN power, suspend/resume & VMX (VT).

If you want to improve Ubuntu/Linux support for VAIO laptops (not just the FS versions), they need as many people as possible to follow this tutorial & submit their results.

Please help out! It’s not hard to do & the results could help to bring about huge improvements in the way that Linux operating systems work with Sony VAIO hardware.

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The first thing that we need to do is find out what version of the BIOS your laptop is using. You can see your BIOS version by pressing F2 as the PC starts & entering the BIOS itself (might be the Esc key on non FS models?).

It should be shown on the very first screen of your BIOS setup menu..

It’s the top line that you need to take notice of & write down. As you can see from the screenshot, mine says BIOS Version: R0040J1.

To exit the BIOS without changing any of your settings, press the Left Arrow key to get to the Exit menu, then press the Down Arrow key to select Discard Changes & Exit, & then press the Enter/Return key to restart your laptop.

Once your laptops restarted & you’ve logged back into your desktop, you will need to install & run a simple ACPI utility. Open up a terminal & enter the following Bold lines (one at a time)..

cd Desktop

sudo apt-get install acpidump

sudo acpidump -b -t DSDT -o FileName

tar -czvf FileName.tar.gz FileName

sudo rm FileName.dsdt

You must replace FileName with your laptop model & BIOS version. To make things easier for the Ubuntu developers to analyse the results, please format the name of the file according to this scheme..

SERIES-MODEL-BIOSVERSION.dsdt

EXAMPLE: Mine is the VGN series of VAIO laptop, model FS215E with BIOS version R0040J1, so I need to name my file VGN–FS215E–R0040J1.dsdt.

Check out the image below to see an example of how your terminal should look. I didn’t use the install command, as I already had the software on my system..

Now you can attach the archive file from your desktop (the tar.gz file) to a reply on the original forum thread & it can be downloaded by IntuitiveNipple/Mattia for dissection & comparison.

Once the developers have this information, bug fixing will become a lot easier & hopefully it won’t be too long before Ubuntu can set up your FN keys etc. automatically on install. This information could go a long way to helping the developers sort out a lot of the other VAIO problems too, not just on Ubuntu but all open source operating systems.

Thanks for helping 😀

More on Fonts..

Those of you who read my prior post on Ubuntu Fonts & followed Carthik’s howto, might be interested in installing Gnome Specimen. This fantastic little program lets you compare all your fonts; making choosing the right one to use in your work a lot easier.

To install, simply open up a terminal & enter..

sudo apt-get install gnome-specimen

Press y to confirm the installation when asked.

Once installed, the program can be found in the Graphics category of the main Gnome menu under the name of Specimen Font Previewer.

As you can see from the screen shot, the program is really easy to use. All the fonts installed on your system will show up in the left pane of the window. Each font name has a small arrow to the left of it that shows (or hides) all the modes of that font (Bold, Italic, etc.) when pressed. Select the modes of the fonts that you want to compare & press the add button. If you want to compare all the modes for a font, you can highlight the name of the font & click the add button. It will add all the supported modes for that particular font to the list.

The great thing about this program is that you can change the size or colour of the fonts, add new fonts to the list that you’re comparing & instantly see any changes you make. There’s no messing about with reloading every time a change is made or anything 😀

This is an extremely useful program & I can’t see it being too long before It’s either installed as standard on Ubuntu, or it gets converted & fully merged into the Gnome desktop software.

Ubuntu SVG Logo..

Thought I’d do a quick post to let everyone know about the Ubuntu Logo Toolkit that I stumbled across yesterday. It’s an SVG (vector graphics) file of the official version that was used in the Edgy release of Ubuntu, & IMHO the best one that’s been made so far.

As It’s an SVG file, you’ll need to have one of the programs capable of editing the file of course. Check out Inkscape for a hint on that 😉

JAustin’s released it under an CC-Attribution-Sharealike licence. The CC licence requires anyone re-using the work, to credit the author and licence any new work that uses the original material under the same licence.

Setting up OpenDNS..

****Updated to work with Hardy Heron releases****

If you need a quick run through on what OpenDNS can do for you, then read my post here!

This tutorial is just a more complete version of the official OpenDNS Get Started guide for Linux/Unix systems. If you need to know how to get a different type of operating system or a router using OpenDNS, then please check the official pages.

Start up a terminal & enter sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf

Add these two lines at the top of your /etc/resolv.conf file (above any other nameserver entries you already have in there)..

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

Save the changed file & exit the text editor.

That’s pretty much it, unless you use DHCP?

If you assign your computer an IP address with DHCP, it will overwrite your /etc/resolv.conf file every time your Internet connection gets renewed. This is what you need to do to stop that from happening..

****For Dapper through to Feisty releases****

Enter sudo gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf into your terminal & look for the following line within the text editor..

#prepend domain-name-servers

Replace that entire line of text with this one..

prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220;

Again; save the file & exit.

****For Gutsy through to Hardy releases****

Enter the following lines into your terminal..

sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.auto

Turns off auto changing of DNS srvers.

Then..

sudo gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf

Opens the file in your text editor.

Add this line to the text file..

prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;

Save and exit the text editor.

In the terminal again enter..

sudo ifdown eth1 && sudo ifup eth1

You might need to change eth1 to whatever your network connection is configured as. This will start/restart your network connection with the new settings (or just log out and back in again).

Every time your Internet connection gets renewed now, it will always use the OpenDNS servers first. Your Internet Service Providers DNS Servers will still be used as backup in case of emergency though 🙂

You can use Gnomes Network application to see if the changes have been applied correctly. To do this go to Gnomes System menu, navigate into the Administration sub menu & choose the Network option. Once the applications fully loaded, click the DNS tab to see what addresses your laptops set up to use.

As you can see from the screen shot below; my laptop uses the two OpenDNS addresses first & uses my routers address of 192.168.0.1 as backup. My router uses my Internet providers DNS as default..

If all looks ok in Gnomes Network application.. now would be a good time to either restart your laptop, or disconnect/reconnect your Internet connection & make sure that your changes are holding ok.

You can test that everything is working as it should by clicking on the following links within your web browser..

http://www.opendns.com/welcome/ – Clicking on this should show you the OpenDNS Welcome page.

http://www.internetbadguys.com/ – This link lets you test & make sure that OpenDNS will warn you when visiting a dodgy site.

http://system.opendns.com/ – The OpenDNS status page shows you which servers are running as they should be & if any are having trouble. I like that I can check this page for problems if my Internet seems to have slowed; Not that I’ve ever needed it 😉

Speed up your Internet for free..

For those of you that don’t already know; Domain Name System (or DNS for short) is used to translate a web sites Domain Name into its true IP address.

EXAMPLE: This sites Domain Name is http://ubuntufs.wordpress.com/, but the true address of where it resides on the internet will be something like http://203.89.25.87/.

To get to this site you enter the Domain Name into your web browser, the Domain Name is then checked by a DNS server to find out what the true IP address of the site is. You are then automatically directed to the correct IP address & location of the server that hosts my site.

Most people have never bothered to change which DNS severs they use & just stick to using the one that’s supplied to them by their Internet Service Provider (ISP). This is a big mistake as it’s very easy to change your DNS & the result can lead to a faster, more secure & ultimately more enjoyable Internet experience.

OpenDNS is a project that puts more control within the hands of the computer user. They have a network of fast DNS servers around the world & your computer/network will always use the one closest to you ensuring the best results.

Why Use It:

Better speeds always a good thing when it comes to your Internet connection, but in what other ways can OpenDNS help you out?..

Even the best typers can make mistakes, so OpenDNS can sometimes fix wrongly typed web site addresses for you. EXAMPLE: If you’re using OpenDNS, then ubuntufs.og will lead directly to ubuntufs.org.

OpenDNS can identify and stop sites trying to phish (steal) your personal information or money.

OpenDNS lets you block specifics websites from loading through Domain Blocking. This helps to protect the people using your computer or network from visiting specific websites.

With OpenDNS, you can also create shortcuts that let you type something small into your address bar & it’ll take you straight to where you want to go. EXAMPLE: typing 2x into my address bar would take me straight to http://www.gp32x.com.

One of the best things about OpenDNS, is that no software needs to be installed on your system to try it out & all changes are easy to revert back (if the need ever arises). It also works on any operating system or hardware that allows you to change the DNS address.

If you use a router or switch for your home network, you might be able to change the DNS address that the hardware uses. This will let all the computers on your network use OpenDNS automatically, without you having to change configurations for each computer separately.

OpenDNS Business Plan:

People are always suspicious when it comes to free things like this, so I’ll go ahead & tell you how they make money from it & still manage to keep it free for people like you & me..

The OpenDNS team make money from generic results only. If you enter something into your web browsers address bar that isn’t an official web site address, the page that appears will contain search results & some advertisements that the team will make money on when clicked;..

..don’t worry as the advertisements are unobtrusive & won’t get in your way (there are no pop-ups). This is pretty much the same type of system that companies like Google use, except the OpenDNS team don’t get paid for producing biased results 😉

Experience:

I’ve been using OpenDNS on my Ubuntu-FS laptop & Windows games machine for about a month so far & haven’t experienced any negative effects at all. Unfortunately I can’t change the DNS settings in my router to use OpenDNS as Sky have loaded it with their crippled firmware. It’s a shame, but I’ll just have to change all the computers in my house separately instead.

If OpenDNS sounds like a good idea & you want to give it a try your self, then check out the official getting started page here, or have a read through the tutorial that I put together here.