Ubuntu
ZA Jammed Like Champions
Awhile ago I posted that Ubuntu-za and clug was planning a Jam. Well on Sunday it actually happened and +- 20 people showed up. I consider that to be pretty awesome.
Highlights
- Tumbleweed explained basic bug reporting, Debian packaging, translations and gave us a quick demo on building Hello.
- Almost every one upgraded/reinstalled to Lucid some people even did both
- Some one made a 3D render animation of Tux (I really need to find out what his name was and if we can get hold of it)
- Mythbuntu crept into peoples boot screens. See LP bug A fix has since been released
- Michiel started translating things into Afrikaans
- I started using xmonad
- Coke was drunk
- Pizza’s were eaten (Thanks Clug)
- Coffee was made (thanks tumbleweed+maia)
- Milk was spilt
- And nothing blew up
Some Pics
Ubuntu-za Is Jamming
So I guess it is about time I finally blog about it. Ubuntu-za in conjunction with Clug will be hosting a Jam. I just want to thank Stefano and Maia for all their hard work in setting it up and being so proactive.
Maia long with a few other people from -za have wiped up a pretty cool post for the even if I do say so my self.
You can find the source for both the English and Afrikaans versions on Spread Ubuntu.
As you can see from the post the event will be at the Shuttleworth Labs at UCT directions between 10am – 5pm on Sunday the 28th March 2010. If you can’t make it for the full time don’t worry just pop in at any point. We will have the full LEG mirror so even if you wont have to worry about downloading all those big packages or worrying about downloading large ISO’s just for testing.
Reasons to come
- Having fun learning from others.
- Get help installing Ubuntu
- Trying out the development release. Don’t worry you don’t need to be a developer or even an experienced Ubuntu user.
- Translations
- Want to save bandwith and come copy the repos
- Learn how to report bugs so that they might actually get fixed!
- Learn packaging
- Watch some cool pre-release demos from Lucid
In preparation for this event I went and upgraded my laptop to Lucid. I don’t really know how long it took because I did the very trusting thing and went to sleep after entering Y.
I did wake up with a nice shiny blue screen asking me if I wanted to overwrite my grub menu selected keep original and about 5minutes later I had a nice shinny purple lucid looking screen. Woohoo.
I also then reporting my first Lucid theme bug. Before I have every one goes on about oh noes not another move buttons to the right bug report this one is slightly different. It actually requests if the buttons are by default on the left can we make the theme previews or at least the default theme on the left too.
Broadcom BCM4322 Wireless On Ubuntu Karmic
I recently tried setting up a Dell Laptop with a Broadcom wireless driver. It was the only thing that wasn’t auto detected and setup correctly. Which got me a bit worried.
drubin@ubuntu:~$ lspci | grep -i net
0e:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
One of the first hits in Google was from Dimitar while this blog post has nice detailed instructions. It seems to miss points that make Linux so amazing the first being package management and on this point being able to upgrade your kernel. I found that blog post to be very informative and detailed but the part that made me question things was
Then click on the “Status” button and select “Installed”. Then search for “linux-”. Select all packages that start with “linux-” and then Package -> Lock Version.
What so I wouldn’t be able to do kernel updates? That wasn’t going to do at all. So I did what any good Floss user would do and read the read me from the BroadCom driver page
PRECOMPILED DRIVER
——————-
Some distros (Ubuntu and Fedora at the least) already have a version of
this driver in their repositories precompiled, tested and ready to go.
You just use the package manager to install the proper package. If
its available for your distro, this is usually an easier solution. See
the end of this document for further discussion.
This is something I haven’t seen that often official drivers pointing you to the Distro maintained versions. Linux has come along way in recent years. Any how for all those that happen to stumble here from Google and other places. I just want to mention the easier way to get the drivers working is written in the readme. 
Ubuntu:
——
Go to System->Administration->Hardware Drivers
Choose the Broadcom STA wireless driver
ActivateSometimes the driver does not show up in the Hardware Drivers choices. In
this case, try reintalling the driver from the GUI or shell like this:From the GUI:
Package Manager (System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager). Click the
Reload button in the upper left corner of Synaptic to refresh your index then
search for and reinstall the package named bcmwl-kernel-source.From the shell:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get –reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-sourceIn either GUI or text case, after reinstalling, reboot your machine.
Now go back to System->Administration->Hardware Drivers
and you should see the driver enabled and working.
I really hope this helps some one from compiling their own driver and having to maintain it between kernel upgrades. Btw I have upgraded my Karmic kernel to the latest 2.6.31.20.33 with it still working.
Stellenbosch Ubuntu Hour Report Back
A few days ago I mentioned Ubuntu Hour.Well we put some details and a pic on our wiki. All in all I think it was good start, I got to start my morning off with a decent cup of coffee that I didn’t have to make my self. Even though it was small I think we showed off Ubuntu well with T-Shirts, Stickers and 2 tables with 3 laptops powered by Ubuntu.
I know the timing isn’t great for work people (9am – 10am) so maybe we can think about switching it around or have another one at a pub after work for some beers? One of the main reasons for this time is the idea of starting something like this is to try make it fit into your routine not change your routine to fit it since this makes it easier to keep up with it in the long run.
My Weechat Setup
I have been using the devel version of Weechat since about march 2009 because of a exploit in 0.2.6 (Which has been fixed in the repo’s from 0.2.6.1).
Why would I carry on using the devel version even if the security issue has been patched?
Simple 0.3.0 isn’t in any released stable Ubuntu repository yet also I like to help out testing/debugging/bug reporting where I can.
Why Weechat over some other CLI client like Irssi?
It started off as a simple I preferred Weechat’s config layout and ease of use and sane default configurations. Also the support from the Weechat community is astounding. People like xt and Flashcode have ported the majority of irssi scripts just to help out people transitioning from Irssi to Weechat. On that note the new changes in weechat’s API make almost every thing customisable and scriptable. I do in fact still still make use of Irssi as a bouncer still until weechat’s relay plugin is stable enough. Hopefully this will be finished soon.
How scriptable is Weechat?
Weechat provides bindings for Python, Ruby(devel version even supports ruby 1.9 now), tcl, Perl, and of course C. Weechat has a very extensive API to plugin to almost every aspect of the Weechat functionality.
Is Weechat available in my language
Weechat supports Internationalization so even if it currently isn’t available feel free to translate it into your own language.
My Favourite scripts/features
First and foremost is weeget this is weechats script manager/updater. Once installed you are able to install/update any other script including its self by simply doing /weeget install $scritpname.
- iset – Allows a simple interface to edit/search for configurations
- weeget – see above.
- buffer_autoclose – basically closes inactive private buffers after a specific period, helps to keep things clean and neat.
- go – Allows for hot jumping to buffers
- screen_away – Script that sets your away status based on whether weechat’s screen is attached or not.
- shell – Allows simple commands to be executed from within weechat.
- urlgrab – Script that helps manage the annoyances of long urls that would normally be unclickable
- aspell – This is a plugin not a script! This highlights spelling mistakes on your input buffers so you can see quickly for those minor typo’s
Tips and Tricks
- Add the alias smart filter. Helps to hide useless info like joins and parts from inactive members of large channels ie #ubuntu-meeting
- Use weechat’s remote access.
- Read the FAQ it contains lots of useful information.
Hope this has been of some help to others.