The following is a brief list of instructions for getting Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) set up on an MSI Wind u100 in a reasonably child-friendly fashion:

1. Get the Ubuntu 9.04 ('Jaunty Jackal') UNR image and install it according to these instructions. Do not try 9.10 ('Karmic Koala') - at this point it's broken (which should come as no surprise to those who've tried Karmic).
2. Uninstall Pidgin and Evolution using Synaptic.
3. Create a user for each child who will use the device, and turn off unwanted priviliges - in particular "Administer the system". Leave WiFi connection privileges alone (kinda misses the point of a netbook if you disable that).
4. Install DansGuardian (and Squid and ClamAV) according to these instructions, stopping once you've completed Step 3 (i.e. before you start configuring WPAD).
5. Configure your system to use localhost:8080 as your proxy for all users according to these instructions.
6. Make Firefox proxy settings read-only according to these instructions.
7. Observe that everything stops working when you reboot. Squid isn't clever enough to pick up changes to resolv.conf that NetworkManager makes when it connects to a WiFi network. The fix is to create a dispatcher script in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d that restarts Squid when it receives an 'up' message. Seriously.

The dispatcher script I'm using looks like this:

#!/bin/sh -e

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "$0: called with no interfact" 1>&2
  exit 1;
fi

# restart Squid so it can see the new interface
case "$2" in
  up)
    /etc/init.d/squid restart
    ;;
esac

Anyhow, on the list of things to do is to figure out how to route all HTTP traffic through DansGuardian using iptables, so as not to have to depend upon Firefox and other apps honouring the system proxy settings.

I can't help but see a commercial product here: a remix of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but designed from the ground-up to be child-safe. Perhaps it could even use a separate apt mirror, loaded only with child-safe apps? I mean, I got very lost several times figuring this stuff out and I do this sort of thing for a living.

If you try building CenterIM on the Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) beta and you get the following error:

configure: error: Package requirements (nss >= 3) were not met: No package 'nss' found

... then running the following apt-get command will install all the build prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libgpgme11-dev libgpgme11 automake libgnutls-dev autoconf libncurses5 libncurses5-dev gettext git-core libcurl4-openssl-dev libtool cvs

I use a USB thumb drive (a Toshiba 2GB with the U3 software uninstalled) for many things; my SSH and GNUPG files along with the pet software projects I'm working on.

Today, I inserted it into my laptop (running Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackal) and it didn't automount. I suspected file system corruption on the thumb drive, & I was right. The fix was easy:

sudo apt-get install partionmanager
sudo partitionmanager

I selected the thumb drive from the partition list, right-clicked, and chose Check. Then I clicked Apply, and partionmanager repaired whatever faults existed on the filesystem. The thumb drive then auto-mounted with no further effort.

Oddly, my first attempt to rectify this from the command line using fsck failed. The file system check completed, but the drive still wouldn't mount. I'm guessing there is a difference between what fsck did and what partitionmanager did during repair, but I don't know what it is ...

Yet another reason not to leave Emacs ... courtesy the console-based CenterIM and a little bit of code in my .emacs file, I can do all my instant messaging (MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, ...) from within Emacs (thanks to Anselm Helbig on comp.emacs for some elisp advice):

I've updated my Emacs setup on GitHub to include the code to set up CenterIM in a multi-term window. You'll want to ensure that your system has CenterIM installed; on Ubuntu this is as simple as:

sudo apt-get install centerim

Note that my Emacs setup is sufficiently clueful to detect if you're running on MS Windows, & not try to start up any multi-term sessions, including CenterIM.

I've finally had it with Microsoft Windows. Over the last couple of weeks, I've experienced the following on a couple of Windows boxes (Vista and XP):

• unprompted restarting as a result of an update being installed; this cost me an unsaved game of Hellfire
• hanging during operations involving large numbers of files (on Vista)
• Windows Explohder has taken to hanging when displaying new windows; often when I hit 'Win+E' I get a window title and border but nothing inside it
• BSODs on my wife's laptop when she plugs her iPhone in; not my iPhone, only hers

After restarting Explorer for the third time yesterday while trying to do a simple file copy, I decided that I would make my laptop a Windows-free zone, running only Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope (plus Wine for a few Windows games like Hellfire).

Now I have an extra 50GB space on my hard drive, and still have the ability to run my favourite Windows games using either Wine or DOSBox:





As far as modern software goes, I'm using the following Linux software in place of Windows software (in fact I've been doing this for several years now, for the most part - the difference is that I'm now using the Linux alternatives 100% of the time):

1. Evolution in place of Outlook
2. K3B in place of Nero
3. Rythmbox in place of iTunes
4. Emacs in place of ... well ... Visual Studio, SlickEdit, mIRC, IDLE, and RadRails for starters :-)
5. FlightGear in place of MS Flight Simulator
6. VLC in place of Windows Media Player
7. Grip in place of FreeRip

The rest of the programs I use on a regular basis - including Firefox, Skype, Pidgin, OpenOffice, and LyX - all run as happily on Linux as they do on Windows. In fact, they're happier, given how much more stable I find Ubuntu 9.04 is than either Windows XP or Vista. It's hard for a program to run well if the operating system on which it runs is misbehaving all the time.

I'll still be using Windows from time to time, as the client component of our forthcoming product is Windows-based (using .NET). But my laptop is now a 100% Windows-free zone and it feels good :-)

After a recent Ubuntu update, my laptop suddenly stopped producing sound. Or, rather, the only sound it produced was a faint crackling.

It turns out that this was the result of the update muting my default sound device; the fix is to use alsamixer to unmute the channels. See this HOWTO for details; in my case I just skipped to part C, step 3 and had sound going again in a few seconds.

I've been taking a look at the Google Analytics reports for my blog (if you don't have Analytics on your site, get it now - you can find out so much stuff about who your visitors are, why they're visiting, what they're doing ...). It turns out that a lot of people come here for the Palm + Vista advice.

So, I thought it'd be an opportune time to mention that most Linux distros have had excellent Palm support for years, and continue to support the older Palm devices as well.

If you've been looking for an excuse to try out Linux, and you'd like to continue using your Palm device for years to come, you might want to give it a whirl. In fact some distros (like Ubuntu) will run entirely off a Live CD, so you can play around with Linux without actually installing anything to your hard drive until you're ready.

In my experience, the easiest Palm client on Linux is JPilot - Gnome has Palm support with gpilotd but configuring it is a right pain (although I haven't tried it in over a year; it might well have improved since then).

If anyone is interested in a complete Palm, Linux and JPilot walkthrough - how to make an Ubuntu LiveCD, and how to test it out with your Palm Pilot, without installing anything on your PC - please let me know & I'll put something together.

Need a dockable alternative to wmmixer for WindowMaker? I suggest Mixer.app, which you can get on Ubuntu with a simple ...

sudo apt-get install mixer.app

So I spent several hours struggling to get wifi going on my otherwise perfect Compaq C700. Then I stumbled upon the following tutorial:

http://quilombo.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/atheros-ar5006eg-in-ubuntu-710-gutsy-gibbon/

I followed the  steps he outlined and bingo, I was up and running with wifi in a few minutes.  I strongly recommend checking this out if you've had problems with wifi on the C700.

There's only one caveat; the link he provides to the Atheros download page now has newer versions of the drivers. You'll need to scroll down a bit to find the 6.x version drivers he recommends (in theory it should work with the newer driver versions but I haven't yet tested that myself).

Here's how to install ProFont on Ubuntu, and change it to be the default font in Emacs. This should work on all flavours of Ubuntu, but I've only tested it on Xubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10.

1. Download profont-x11.tar.gz from here and save it in your home directory.
2. From your home directory, run the following shell commands:
   

   tar -zxvf profont-x11.tar.gz
   cd profont-x11
   gzip *
   sudo cp *.gz /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc
   cd /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc
   sudo mkfontdir .

3. Log out and then restart the X server with Ctrl + Alt + Backspace.
4. Log in and run Emacs.
5. Choose Options -> Customize Emacs -> Browse Customization Groups.
6. Expand Emacs -> Faces -> Basic Faces.
7. Click the Face link to the left of Default.
8. Scroll down in the second buffer until you see Font Family, and enter nil-profont in the text field.
9. In the height field, enter 89.
10. C-x C-s to save, and your font should immediately change to 9 point ProFont.